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SmilingObsidian1272

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University of Wisconsin–Madison

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linguistics language language study human language

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These notes cover the basics of linguistics, including the power of language, arbitrariness, systematicity, signifiers, signifieds, linguistic competence and performance, the study of sound systems, and how words and phrases are formed.

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CHAPTER 1 The power of language - Name calling - Judging byx ear x The system of language - Human language is a conventional system of signs that allows for the creative communication of meaning Arbitrariness and Systematicity - Signifier - The linguistic form - Sig...

CHAPTER 1 The power of language - Name calling - Judging byx ear x The system of language - Human language is a conventional system of signs that allows for the creative communication of meaning Arbitrariness and Systematicity - Signifier - The linguistic form - Signified - Is the concept to which the signifier refers (be that a real-world object or an abstract idea) - Linguistic sign - Together the signifier and signified create this - Ex: in a sequence of sounds in “dog” and the concept of the four-legged canine together create the linguistic sign we think of as dog - The relationship is arbitrary - There is no direct relationship between the sound of the word and its meaning - Linguistic competence - Refers to speaker's knowledge of grammatical rules that govern his or her language - Stable - Chomsky - Lingusitic performance - Is a speaker’s realization of these rules in his or her speech - Performance can be imperfect - Stumble over words, use errors, speak in incomplete sentences - Chomsky Creativity - Recursion - The capacity of language to embed an infinite number of elements into its grammatical structures Grammar - Grammatical - Many speakers use it to refer to sentences that conform to rules in all grammar or usage books for how we should write - Linguists use the word to refer to all langiahe constructions that conform to the systematic rules of a language and are, therefore comprehensible to another speaker of the language Linguistics - Principled study of language as a system - Phonology - The study of sound systems and sound change usually within a particular language - Is accompanies by phoenetics - Phonetics - The description and classification of sounds more generally and the study of their production and perception - Morphology - The study of how words form - Syntax - Considers the structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences - Semantics - The study of meanings, the relationship between linguistic signs and the things they represent - Pragmatics and discourse analysis - Attempt to explain how we manage to communicate with language - Stylistics - The study of langauge as it is used in written contects, usually literary, but including courtroom rhetoric, political speeches and journalism as well as poetry, novels and graffiti - Sociolinguitics - The study of language in use more generally, including the study of langaige my region or by socioeconomic status, gender, race, age, or other category - Applied linguistics - Encompasses all applications of linguistic theory to real world problems including areas such as language policy, language education, ,language acquisition and loss, speech pathology, lexicography, and discourse analysis - Historical linguistics - Any aspect of lnagiage can be considered historically - Studies processes of langauge change and their reults - Synchronically - Any aspect can also be considered in the terms of the present - Psycholinguistics - The ways in which we acquire and understand language Distinctive Characteristics of Human Language - Displacement - The ability to project forward and backward in time as well as to discuss the abstract - We express the notion that something ‘could’ or ‘might’ happen which allows us to use language to form hypotheses and to question the hypotheses of others Language Geaneologies - Reflexes - Ex: father, vader, vater - All have a common ancestor word in a shared early Germanic ancestor language - Etymon - Cognates - Proto language - Ex: indo-european - A language for which we have no written evidence but we can infer from comparison of its descendents and development of the laws according to which it sounds and word forms change Mechanics of Langiage Change - Internal factors - Those inhrent to the structure expecially the sound structure of the language - Socual factors - Those that depend on the behavior of speech communities - Cognitive factors - Those that depend on our comprehension of the language and on our mind’s language processes 1: Lecture 9/4 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdJFxdhRheFt3dec8nYYNKtTOoJ8iB7CGFIK5R38cqP0EbDyQ/viewform How do you define english? - By speakers? - Ability - Country - More Second language speakers than “native” speakers - England “inner circle” - More romance than Germanic words Why don’t we all speak the same language What is english? A global language spoken by humans - Native speakers - 2+ speakers The Signs of Language - Signs - Languages represent a system - Representational - What is a system - Signifier and signified - Brokered agreement - Replicable across domains The Shape of Language - Bees - Systematic dances - Interact with the word (flowers, other bees) - Displacement (not present) - Whistling language - A spoken language with segments removed - Click languages - All properties of human language but perception is restricted by the language you learn CHAPTER 2 Descriptive versus Prescriptive Grammar Rules - Prescriptivists - Prescribe, and establish rules often as an authoritative guide - Language pundits are usually this - Descriptivists - Linguists and lexicographers are usually this - Describe is to give an account that characterizes something - Prescriptive rules - Establish and enforce what we should say or write according to established notions of “good” and “bad”, “right” vs “wrong” - These rules judge the correctness of utterances and try to enforce one forma, norm - Ex - do not end a sentence with a preposition - Do not use hopefully as a sentence adverb - Use singular inclusive pronouns to refer back to indefinite pronouns such as everyone - descriptive rules - - Attempt to model speakers linguistic competence and performance what speakers know about a langaiuge and how they actually use it - Such rules describe what we do say or write in any given language - Assume knowledge most of it unconscious of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics - Evaluate the structural well-formedness of an utterance, not its appropriateness or stylistic correctness - Generally associated with the spoken language - Ex: - Adjectives preced the nouns they modify - Regular nouns form the plural by adding -s - Indefinite pronouns such as everyone are often referred back to with plural pronouns because they seem semnatically plural Case Study One: Multiple Negatives - Refers to grammatical constructions that use two or more grammatical elements to express negation - The term does not refer to speaker’s intentional use of two negatives in opposition to teach other - Descriptive rules find nothing wrong with multiple negatives - People started to view the double negative as illogical Corpus Linguistics - Involves the systematic, empirical study of language based on “real life” examples of language use, written and spoken - Typically exploits computer searchable corpora in order to uncover patterns of language use and to explore what contextual factors influence these patterns (ex: the genre/register of the text) LECTURE 9/9 Standard english - Difficult to define because often rules are broken even by “best” users of english - Perhaps - The prestige variety typically is the nationally-transcendent speech forms that are associated with education, writing, and a formal register - Users of such variety typically exert linguistic power over those who do not - If you sound local (of current or another region), working class and non-white, then standard speakers might consider you non-standard - There are many nuances and layers of standard - Policing language can happen at any level (top-down, bottom-up) Arguments For & Against Change - Prescriptivism - Follow a fixed set of rules - Inform us about established patterns - Inform us about established patterns - Loss of of “overt rules” lead us to destruction of a language, an unhealthy language - Looks to educated by preservation of rules - This is only partially a conservative approach where “proclaimed national values” - Descriptivism - See variation and adaptation as a natural part of language - How people use language - How our minds work Prescriptive rules - Dont use multiple negatives - I didn't give her non ~ i didn’t give hery any - Don’t use ain’t - Can be a contraction for many things - I ain’t been here but five minutes (haven’t been) - I ain’t heard her (didn’t hear/hadn’t heard) - They ain’t heard her either - Use whom when appropriate - Who arrived at the party? (Mary arrived) - Whom did you invite to the party (I invited John.) LECTURE 9/11 What is Standard English? - Also known as standard written English or SWE is the form of english most widely accepted a being clear and proper - Standard english is … - Geographically restricted (due to history) - Unrestricted (due to use) - Written rather than spoken - A variety used by a certain social class (educated) - Reflects power and authority Caveats - There a few minor differences between standard usage in england and the US but these difference do not significantly affect communication in the english language - Most dictionaries merely report on words that are used, not on their grammar or usage. Merely because a word appears in a dictionary does not mean that it is standard Two-word variants vs. one-word variants - Ought to rather than should - Outside of instead of outside - More than instead of over - Half of instead of half - Get into instead of get in - Has to/needs to instead of must Standard American English - Kretzschmar (2008) makes 4 observations - Educated - The level of quality (here of pronunciation) that is employed by educated speakers in formal settings - Translocal - Crosses regions and circumstances - Unremarkable - Standard speakers prefer not to stand out “the most highly educated speakers in formal settings tend to suppress any linguistic features that they recognize as marked LECTURE 9/18 Phonology - Natural classes - Phonemes and Allophones - Rule types - Syllables - Example: lateral allophone Natural Classes: Phonetic Similarity in Spite of Variation - Phonetic similarity …in principle, maybe - Similarity among consonants - Shared features - To include - To exclude - Example: /k g/ (natural class?) Natural Classes: Phonetic Similarity of negative-like terms - Sibilants - Shared features - To include - To exclude - Example: /s z ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/ (natural class? Stridents - Can only exist between teeth and end of hard palate - Therefore they make a phonetic natural class that isn’t represented by a single column on a consonant chart - Two kinds of turbulent flow - At constriction - At an obstruction in front of constriction Changes - Phones - Simply the sounds of of human language - No understanding of the relationship - Allophone - Variants that appear to be connected - What shows up in different environments - Example: what difference does the position in a word have on the “p” sounds? - Pin - [​​p^h] - Aspirated at beginning of word - Unique trigger - Spin, Nip, Nips - [p] - Plain in an initial cluster of consonants - Not unique and nothing to remember Phoneme - The “sound” stored in our brains - The guy behind both superman and clark kent - Contrastive with other sounds /p/ /k/ Pin Kin Spin Skin Nip Nick Nips Nicks - Minimal pairs - All of the sounds are the same except one - Reveal contrastive distribution - e.g. , pin ~ kin but not pin ~ spin Allophones - Are variants of phoneme - Reflect complementary distribution - Superman effect - Not in the same place at the same time - Environment - Predicts which one will show up (if ‘random’ then free variation) - Look to the left (of the variant) - Look to the right (of the variant) - Could be on side (in - prefix for not, p.81) or both sides (e.g. intervocalic voicing flapping) Phonological Rule - Is a description of how a sound, stored in the brain is pronounced General Principle - Rules operated over a natural class - I.e. sounds in a natural class will behave the same - I.e. if one in a group does X we predict that in group will do X Assimilation - Become more similar with neighbor - Sharing at least one aspect (term on the chart) thay is given by one sound to another - Example (p.81) - /in-/ + balance > imbalance - “The phoneme n becomes m when next to a b” - “A nasal shares the place of articulation with a following stop consonant” Other rules - Insertion deletion - Metathesis - Vowel raising - Vowel lowering - Vowel nasalization - Why - Many times due to - Repairing syllables or rhythm - Neighbors (affixation) English Syllables: Sound structure - Syllables - Unit fo speech - Used for ‘counting’ - Shape - Nucleus with some resonant, usually voweled - Onset beginning consonants - Coda ending consonants - Energy is generally highest for that group of sounds during the nucleus - Energy generally falls easy so that sonorants are close to vowel and consonants are close to sonorants - Ex: ground ( stop + liquid + diphthong + nasal + stop ) - Exception: /s/ - “S-clusters” - Plural, possessive, agreement, contraction Example: Allophones of English /l/: Procedure to stating a rule from data 1. List all variants of the sound(s) under question 2. List environments in which each sound occurs 3. Generalize: try to eliminate similar environments 4. State each process 5. Format of rule a. Phoneme goes to allophone in the environment of critical neighbors CHAPTER 3 Phonetics and phonology - Phonemes - Within the continuous stream of sound that we usually think of as speech or even language - Our brains distinguish individual sound units or segments which linguists call phonemes - What native speakers hear as a distinctive sound of a language - A sound different from all other sounds in the language - Ex: The sound “p” in puck and cup - Allophones - Subtle variant of a phoneme - A sound may be produced differently in differently in different environments that is depending on the position of the sound in a word or the other sounds that appear next to the sound - Ex: the p in puck isn't exactly the same as the p in cup - If you say puck you hear the puff of air as p moves to the vowel that follows, but the p in cup which is in the word-final position (occurs at the end of the word) stops the airflow - Phonology - The study of the sound system of any given language: the organization of a language’s sounds and their relationships to one another -Examines which sounds make up the distinctive consonants and vowels of a language which sounds would eb considered by speakers just to be variants of those distinctive sounds, and which from others in at least one of these categories - Phonetics - The study of speech sounds more generally how they are produced and how they are perceived - Can be divided into three types - Articulatory phonetics - Focuses on how speech sounds are produced - i.e. what articulators like the tongue, teeth, lips, hard and soft palate, and so forth, in the mouth and elsewhere do to create sound - Acoustic phonetics - Focuses on how speech sounds are transmitted - I.e. the characteristics of sound waves created and perceived as part of the speech - Auditory phonetics - Focuses on how the ear translates sound waves into electrical impulses to the brain and how the brain perceives these as speech sounds - I.e. how the brain translates sound waves into speech sounds The Anatomy of Speech - Trachea - the windpipe - Air flows from the lungs up through the trachea to the larynx - Larynx - Protected by the epiglottis - Epiglottis - Cartilage at the root of the tongue - Directs food and other foreign objects to the stomach rather than the lungs - Vocal cords - Elastic muscles that stretch over the larynx - Air coming up from the lungs forces the vocal cords apart after which they snap back together to create vibrations - These vibrations are called voicing - Important parts - Lips, teeth, and tongue - Alveolar ridge - The ridge behind your teeth - Hard palate - The hard flat surface along the top of your mouth - Soft palate or velum - The soft surface on the top back of the mouth - In order to allow air to flow from the lungs out to the mouth, the velum raises and moves to the back of the oral cavity - It can also lower to block the mouth, in which case the air flows from the lungs out the nose (as it does when we sound ‘nasal’) - Consonants - Generally involved stopping or impeding the airflow from the lungs as the articulators near or touch each other - Also appear at the margins of syllables - Ex: bad - Vowels - Are characterized by unimpeded airflow, during which speakers change the shape of the oral cavitiy and the relative position and shape of the tongue to create different sounds - Serve as the center or nucleus of a syllable - Ex: bad The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) - Provides an established, consistent set of symbols for representing the sounds of all the world’s known languages - Provides a way to transcribe words with a one-to-one correspondence between sound and symbol - Diacritics - The marks that modify letters in order to represent different sounds - Some distinctions in speech are linguistically relevant (e.g. the difference between consonants and vowels, allophonic variation in the production of a phoneme, intonation) and others are not (e.g. personal voice quality) - Speech can be represented as a sequence of distinct sounds or segments and those segments can be usefully divided into two categories: consonants and vowels - Phonetic descriptions of sounds can be made with reference to how the sounds are produced (their articulation) and how they sound (their auditory characteristics) English consonants - Distinctive features - Place of articulation - Identifies the location of the passive and active articulators - Manner of articulation - Describes how close the articulators get and how that affects the airflow - Voicing - Indicates whether the vocal cords are pulled back (voiceless or unvoiced) or vibrate (voiced) when a consonant sound is produced - Stops - Completely obstruct the airflow from the lungs through the moyth followed by a relrease of the air - 6 types (3 voiced, 3 voiceless) - Bilabial - Using both of your lips to stop the airflow then releasing the air - If your vocal cords are pulled back so there is no voicing you will produce and hear the voiceless bilabial stop /p/ - If the vocal cords vibrate to create a voiced sound, you will produce and hear the voiced bilabial stop /b/ - Alveolar - Put the tip of your tongue on the alveolar ridge as you cut off and release, the airflow - Without voicing you will produce the alveolar stop /t/ - With voicing you will produce the voiced alveolar stop /d/ - Velar - Move your tongue all the way back to the velum as you cut off and release the air flow - Without voicing you will produce the voiceless velar stop of /k/ - With voicing you will produce the voiced velar stop /g/ - Glottal stop - The complete stoppage of airflow and then release - Ex: the stop in the middle of uh-oh - Not included in the chart of english phonemes because it is a variant of /t/ and /d/ Fricatives - Occur when the passive and active articulators are brought very close together and crate friction as the air passes through the mouth - Labiodental - Put your teeth on the lower lip and push air through - Without voicing - /f/ - With voicing - /v/ - Interdental - Put your tongue betyween your teeth and push the air through - Without voicing - /θ/ - With voicing - /ð/ - English speakers think of both of these sounds as “th” - A lot of english speakers make both of these sounds with the tongue pressed up against the back of the teeth rather than inbetween - Alveolar fricative - Put the tip of of your tongue on the alveolar ridge and push the air through - Without voicing - /s/ - With voicing - /z/ - Alveopalatal or palatal fricative - Move the blade or front of your tongue back toward the hard palate and push the air through - Without voicing - /∫/ - What english speakers think of as “sh” - With voicing - /3/ - Occurs in the middle of words like “measure” - Glottal fricative - /h/ - Can be descirbed as a puff of air preceding a vowel Afrricates - Combine a stop and a frticative - Two types - Alveopalatal or palatal - Start making an alveolar stop and then create an aleveopalatal or palatal fricative - Without voicing in either sound - /t∫/ - “Ch” - With voicing in both sounds - /d3/ - ‘J’ - The IPA uses the symbols /č/ and /Ĵ/ to represent these sounds Oral sounds - Stops fricatives and affricates - The air-flow is funneled through the mouth Obstruents - Oral stops, fricatives and affricates - Involved an obstruction of the airflow from the lungs through the mouth Sonorants - The rest of the consonants in english - They are sonorous making what asre sometimes described as ‘humming sounds’ Nasals - Involved the flow of air from the lungs through the nose - Are considered a kind of stop because the airflow in the mouth is cut off - In english, all nasals are voiced - Bilabial nasal stop - Purse your lips and as the air flows through your nose make a humming noise - /m/ - Alveolar nasal stop - Put the tip or blade of your tongue on the alveolar ridge and create noise as the air flows through the nose - /n/ - Velar nasal stop - Move the back of your tongue all the way back to touch the velum and create noise as the air flows through the nose - /η/ - What english speakers think of as /ng/ Liquids and Glides - Are categorizaed as approximants because the articulators are near each other but not enough to impede airflow entirely - The distinctions among these sounds are created by the shape and placement of the tongue - Liquids - Lateral liquid - The tongue touches the roof of the mouth and the airflows around the sides of the tongue - /l/ - Bunched - Most speaker simply bunch the body of the tongue up - /r/ - Glides - Bilabial glide - The lips come close together as they round but it also has a velar component based on the position of the tongue - /w/ - Sometimes referred to as labiovelar - Palatal glide - The tongue moves up near the hard palate - /j/ Syllabic consonants - Four consontats can behave as these - Occur word finally in unstressed syllables (as in bottom, button, bottle, butter) but they can also occur as stressed syllables ( as in first) - The IPA represents syllabic consonants by adding a short vertical line below these consonant symbols English Vowels - All vowels are voiced and involve a continuous stream of air through the oral cavity - Height - Indicates whether the tongue is high in the mouth, low, or in between closer to its “resting position” - Frontness (or backness) - Indicates whether the front of the tongue is nearer the front of the mouth, toward the hard palate or the back of the tongue is nearer the back of the mouth, toward the velum - Tenseness (or laxness) - Indicates whether the tongue muscle is tense (and nearer the periphery of the mouth) or lax (and more centralized) - Front Vowels - From high to low, move from /i/ to /æ/ (from the vowel in beat to the vowel in bat) - As you move from pronouncing /i/ to /æ/ you wil feel your jaw drop in order to widen the oral cavity to produce the low front vowel - Offglide - Made when a vowel moves into a glide (/j/ or /w/) - Onglide - Moves from the glide into a vowel - For instance some speakers pronounce Back vowels - From high to low, more from /u/ (as in boot) to /α/ (as in bother) - As you move from pronouncing /u/ to /α/ you will feel your jaw drop Central Vowels - The most common in english and is represented with two different symbols - /Λ/ “wedge” - When the vowel appears in a stressed syllabvle - /ə/ “shwa” - When the vowel appears in an unstressed syllable as in but Dipthongs - Begin at the point of articulation of one vowel and end at the point of articulation of another - Combination of a vowel and a glide - Following IPA conventions here and use the notation based on two vowels - /αI/ - As in buy and I - /αυ/ - As in bough and ow/ouch - /‫כ‬I/ - As in boy and oy Natural classes - Consonants and vowels are described so far help us identify them - A set of sounds that can be described by their shared features so as to include all those sounds and exclude all others - Ex - /p,b,t,d,k,g/ the natural class of oral stops - /p,b/ the natural class of bilabial oral stops - /p,t,k/ the natural class of voiceless stops - /s, z, ∫, 3, t∫, d3/ the natural class of sibilants - Or the “hissing” noise - The set of sounds /p,t/ is not a natural class because while these are both voiceless stops that description would also include /k/ so /p,t/ is incomplete as it stands Phonemes and Allophones - Allophones are predictable in terms of which variant will occur in a particular phonological environment Sample allophones - Aspirated consonants - Produced with a small puff of air accompanying the sound - Ex: pit - Aspirated voiceless stops appear at the beginning of a word or at the beginning of a stressed syllable when the sound appears without a preceding consonant - Unaspirated consonant - Has no puff - Ex: spit - When a voiceless stop appears after /s/ or as the second element of any consonant cluster it will be unaspirated - Complementary distribution - The organization of a sound’s allophones - Ex: /t/ - /t/ is aspirated - Minimal pairs - Another way to describe phonemes is as sounds that when substitute for another create meaningful differences (i.e. different words) - Ex: the sequence of sounds /__æt/, we get bat if we use /b/ in initial position and pat if we substitute /p/ - The pair of words is called a minimal pair - /p/ and /b/ are two different phonemes and the distinction between them is voicing - A pair of words differentiated by only one feature of one sound, which proves that the feature in question is phonemic in that language Phonological Rules - Assimilation - Describe the ways in which a sound becomes more similar to surrounding sounds - Most examples involve consonants - Primary motivation is ease of articulation - It is easier to articulate two consecutive sounds if they share features such as place/manner or articulation or voicing - Can occur both forward (in a sequence of sounds AB, B, becomes more like A) or backward (in a sequence of sounds AB, A becomes more like B) - Ex - Insufficient impractical intolerant impossible inhospitable immature inummerable immeasurable inevitable imbalance inglorius improper - Deletion - The process through which sounds come to be deleted from words - Unstressed syllables tend to occur at fairly regular intervals in naturally occurring speech - As a result unstressed syllables can get shortened and occasionally deleted - Ex: laboratory - The primary stress is in the first syllable with the secondary stress on the third or fourth syllable - In rapid speech the vowel in the second syllable can be deleted to create the cluster /br/ abd the word becomes four syllables long - Insertion - A process in which sounds are added to words most obviously when an affix is added - Ex: length - Where the suffix -th is added to a word ending in -ng - If you listen to yourself say length you may hear an inserted /k/ - As speakers move from the voiced velar nasal to the voiceless interdental/dental fricative they may produce /k/ as a transitional sound - Metathesis - The process of sounds reversing their order - Ex: the old english word Brid becoming bird Syllables and Phontactic Constraits - Syllable - Is a unit of speech consisting of uninterrupted sound, composed of one or more phonemes that generally includes a vowel nucleus (or center) and may iclude a consonant onset or coda - Phonotactic constraints - Refer to the parameters for what sounds can appear in onsets and codas in a particular language Perception of Sound - Spectograms - Machines called spectographs can produce these - Images of the shape of sound waves often called waveforms - Formants - The resonances in the vocal tract are called this - The first one (f1) indicates the air vibration behind the tongue (in the throat) - Auditorily it is involved in our perception of height - The second one (f2) indicates the air vibration in the mouth - auditorily it is involved in our perception of backness or frontness - The third one (f3) plays a role in the production of rounded sounds and is key to our perception of /l/ and /r/ - Pitch - Refers to the rate of reception or vibration of the vocal cords and therefore the air pressure - Tone languages - Are languages in which the pitch of a word can change the meaning of a word - Ex: chinese - Intonation - Refers to difference in pitch that can change the meaning of a sentence - Usually falls at the end of clauses and sentences - McGurk Effect - What we see can have an effect on what we hear - Crash Course Notes Video 1 Meta linguistic awareness - The ability to consciously reflect on the nature of language Form - Sounds or handshakes Combination of Forms - Synthesis of forms to create meaning Duality of patterning - words are made up of two levels of structure Arbitrariness of the sign Sign - Anything that conveys a meaning beyond itself - A unit within a signed language which is produced by using the hands, arms and face Displacement - The ability to talk about things beyond here and now Reflexivity - The ability to use language to talk about language Phonetics - The study of individual sounds in spoken languages - Or handshapes in signed languages Phonology - The study of how individual sounds or handshapes are combined into specific patterns Morphology - The study of the internal structure of words Syntax - The study of how words group together to make sentences Semantics - The study of meanings of words and sentences Pragmatics - The study of meanings of word and sentences in a larger social context Video 2: Morphology Morpheme - Splitting words into segments of meaning - Ex: falling down rabbit holes - Fall - ing down rabbit hole-s - Free morpheme - A morpheme that can stand by itself - Ex: rabbit or hole - Compound - Two or more free morphemes combined together - Ex: doghouse, rabbit hole - Bound morpheme - A morpheme that can’t stand by itself - Ex: the -s in rabbits - prefix and suffix and roots - Root must have its own independent meaning - Infix - When an affix happens inside a word - Fusional morphology - When one affix has one or more meanings - Suppletion - Completely replacing a word - Ex: go turns into went instead of goed Video 3: Syntax 1 Syntax - The study of how languages express relationships between words Grammaticality - Has nothing to do with whether a sentence makes any sense - Not about whether a sentence meets with the approval of teachers, editors, or other authorities Idiolect - Our own unique grammatical way of thinking Phonetics International Phonetic Alphabet Speech sounds - Lungs - Push air up through the vocal cords - The vocal tract - We can change the vocal tract to make and articulate different sounds Articulators - Tongue mouth and rest of the vocal tract - The parts of the body that move to make language Consonants - Are made by closing the vocal tract in some way Vowels - Are made by making the vocal tract a different shape but leaving it open Stops - Require you to close off part of the vocal tract to make the air stop before you let it explode out - Ex: /p/ /t/ /k/ Places of articulation - The spot in the coval tract that allows for different sounds to be made Bilabial sound - Made by pressing both of your lips together - Ex: /p/ Alveolar sound - Made by pressing the front part of the tongue against the hard ridge just behind your teeth called the alveolum - ex: /t/ /s/ Velar sound - Made by pressing the back of the tongue against the soft part of the root of your mouth known as your velum - Ex: /k/ Fricative - Made when air is continuously flowing out of the mouth causing friction - Ex: /f/ /s/ Labiodental sound - Made using the bottom lip and the top teeth - Ex: /f/ Voicing - The process of your vocal cords vibrating - Ex: when pronouncing /z/ Voiceless - When your vocal cords don’t vibrate - Ex: /s/ Voiced - When your vocal cords vibrate - Ex: /z/ Nasal Sounds - Closing the mouth but opening the nasal passage when using the velum - /m/ /n/ Engma - “Ng” sound symbal - Ŋ *always by itself meens voiced, if two the first one is always voiceless” bilabial labio-de alveolar velar ntal stop p,b t,d k,g nasal m n Ŋ fircative f,v s,z x, Ɣ Co-articulated consonants - The articulators touch in two places - Don’t easily fit into any one column on the table - /w/ Non-pulmonic consonants - Consonants that aren’t made with air flowing out of the lungs Click Video 4 Phonetics Part 2: Vowels High vowel - /i/ Low vowel - /ӕ/ Close vowel - Jaw is more closed - /i/ Open vowel - Jaw is more open - /ӕ/ Front vowel - Your tongue stays more towards the front Back vowel - Tongue stays more towards the back Rounded - Lips are rounded - Ex: /o/ Unrounded - Lips are not rounded - /i/ Schwa - Vowel that is neither high nor low or front nor bacl - /ǝ/ Diphthong - Two vowels said together - Ex: oi In pairs the unrounded one is always first Front Central Back Lax tense Lax tense Lax tense Close ɪ i Ʊ u mid ε eɪ ǝ (϶) oƱ open ӕ ʌ a (ↄ) diphthongs aɪ ↄɪ aƱ Vowel inventory - The number of distinct vowel sounds in a particular language Length - The amount of time a vowel is made for Nasalization - Making vowels with both the mouth and nose open Tone - Changing the pitch can change the meaning CHAPTER 4 - Modern English is primarily an analytic language that depends on word order for sentence structure and meaning Synthetic languages - Languages that employ word endings to indicate grammatical function - Nouns change form according to number and case Open and Closed Classes of Morphemes - Closed morphological classes - Include conjunctions, pronouns, auxiliary vers, determiners, prepositions - Tend to be invariant meaning they appear in the same form regardless of how they are used in sentences - Signal important aspects of a sentence level meaning to listeners and readers - Open morphological classes - Those in which word forms adapt to a new grammatical and semantic demands - New items can eb added or subtracted from these morphological classes which is why we call them open - Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and derivational affixes all belong to open morphological classes - Allomorphs - Have two or more phonological realizations of forms - Are variants of one morpheme - Ex: the forms -en and -ed are allopmorphs of the same morpheme: the past participle marker for verbs - Free morphemes - The word consists of exactly one morpheme and that morpheme functions independently as an english word - Most can combine with at least some other morphemes to create still other words - Most morphemes in a closed morphological classes except for inflectional morphemes are free but they do not combine with other morphemes into new words - Ex: up is a free morpheme, talk is also a free morpheme but they can combine together to create uptalk - Bound morphemes - Morphemes that cannot stand independently - Cannot function as free standing english terms, they must always be attached to a morpheme Inflectional and Derivational Bound Morphemes - Inflectional morphemes - Changes as the root adopts each suffix - Ex: uptalk, uptalks, uptalking, uptalked - The roots meaning does not change and neither does the lexical category - Always suffixes - Nouns - Plural -s (uptalkers) - Possessive -s (blogger’s/bloggers’) - Verbs - Third-person singular present tense -s (she blogs) - Progressive -ing (she is blogging - Past tense -ed (she blogged) - Past participle -edl-en (she has blogged/written) - Adjectives - Comparative -er (stinkier) - Superlative -est (stinkiest) - Derivational morphemes - Not inflected but derived - Ex: uptalker, the -er changes the lexical category of the word uptalk from verb to noun; changes the meaning of the root - The derivational suffix of -er which creates nouns to verbs is distinct from the inflectional suffix -er, which marks the comparative form of an adjective (e.g. taller) - When derivational morphemes do not change the lexical category of the word they still change the meaning - Can be prefixes and suffixes Affixes and Combining Forms - Affix - An element of a word joined in some fashion to a base or root word - Three types - Prefix - Suffix - Infix - Prefix - Proceeds the root word - Ex: dis in disappear - Are always derivational - Suffix - Follows the root word - Ex: Age in breakage - All inflectional morphemes are suffixes - Infix - Is paced within the root word - Ex: -fucking in absofuckinglutely - The infix must directly follow the stressed syllable of the matrix - Matrix - Means the root word - Combining form - When bound morphemes are not really affixes - Ex: alcoholic is formed from alcohol (a free open class morpheme) and -ic (a bound derivational morpheme) but -holic has recently been used in other words (chocoholic, sophaholic, workaholic) Morphology Trees Ways of Forming English Words - Lexical gap - When people make up a new word because there is no word to express an idea - Nonce word - When a newly created word is only created once for a specific purpose in a specific context - Combining - The most productive way to make new words in english - Can involve combinations of all free morphemes, free and noun morphemes and occasionally all bound morphemes - Combining processes include - Compounding - Prefixing - Suffixing - Compounding - Compounds - Combinations of free morphemes - Ex: doubleclick, newsgroup, screen saver, username - The primary stress will fall on the first part - Prefixing - Attaching a bound morpheme at the head of an already existing word - Ex: reboot, decryption, encryption, hyperlink and unfriend - Suffixing - Attaching a bound morpheme to the foot of an already existing word - Ex: diskette, hacker, scrollage - Infixing - When a word is divided in order to insert the bound morpheme Shortening - Words can be shortened to form new words in four commons ways - Alphabetism - When a word is formed from the initials of a phrase and the word is pronounces as the resulting sequence of letters - Ex: Universal Resource Locator or URL - Acronymy - Shortened to intialys and then pronounces as though the initials were merely letters in a typical word - Ex: AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) - Clipping - When it loses an element often at its primary morphemtic boundary, next to the root or base - Foreclipped - Ex: net from internet - Hinclippings - Ex: cell from cellular, comp and sci from computer science - Innovative clippings - Dont always observe the original morphemic boundaries - Ex: zine from magazine, rents from parents - Backinformation - Formed by removing an affix from a word to form a word that never existed before - Usually the affix in question is a suffix or a supposed suffix - Ex: beggar - The word is one morpheme in French, but English speakers reinterpreted it as a suffixed form: verb + -er - In this way, through backformation, speakers created the new verb beg - Blending - Blends - are created by joining two or more words at least one of which must be clipped - A hybrid process of clipping and combining - Ex: internet derived from inter (connected) net(work) - Shifting - When a word form employed in on lexical category moves into another category it undergoes a Functional shift - Ex: E-mail began as a noun (“I love e-mail because you can communicate with family and friends more quickly than in letters”) but soon shifted into a verb (“E-mail me tomorrow!”) Reanalysis, Eggcorns and Folk Etymology - Eggcorn - Phonetic reinterpretations of words - Folk etymology - Often speakers supply explanations for what they hear regardless of etymology - A commonly accepted but historically incorrect account of a words origin - Reduplication - When we form new words by repeating a morpheme - Ex: knock-knock Borrowing and the multicultural Vocabulary of English - Borrowing - We adopt a word without alteration - Ex: the Finnish word sauna - Loan translation or claque - Ex: the word groundhog being a literal translation of the Dutch aardvarken or ‘earth pig’ - Generalization - Sepcialization LECTURE 9/25 Synthetic Language - A language in which inflection, rather than word order, mostly indicates grammatical function of words in a sentence - Permits more flexible word order Analytic Language - A language in which word order, rather than inflection, mostly indicates grammatical functions of words in a sentence - A language in which Auxiliary words (prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc.) partially or wholly replace infelctions Morphology Trees - Trees are a model, a visual conception of how the brain puts piece together - To draw a tree we need to know the parts - Where to begin (root) - What order to add affixes - Helps to know what things go together - Ex: If I’m a noun like neighbor, box, or boot or an Adjective like red,happy, or hold then i can accept -ish (neighborish, boxish, bookish, reddish, happyish, boldish) but not the agentivve (person who does X) -er (reder, as in one who reds?) - What to label the whole thing (word) Drawing Morphology Trees - Morphology - Root: morph - Musicians - Root: music - Unusually - Root: usual - Reconsidered - Root: consider - Antidisestablishmentarianism - root:establish - Run - Root: run Seperate the morphemes - Morph-ology - Music-ian-s - Un-usual-ly - Re-consider-ed - Anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism - Run List part of speech of each morpheme - [[morph]N -ology]N - [[music]N-ian]N-s]N - [[un]-[usual]Adj - ly] adv - [[re-[donsider]V]V-ed] - [anit[[[dis-[[establish]v-ment]N]N-arian]N-ism]N]N - [run]? Allophones - Leap [lip] - Clear L - Plow [plaw] - Voiceless L - Apple [æpəɫ] - Dark L - Wealth [wɛɫ̪ θ] - Dark dental L Allomorphs - Any variant of a morpheme - Plural - Suffix /z/ - [z] in dogs, cans, bottles, sodas - Not really an allophone because /z/ doesnt change - Suffix - / aks/ + /n/ - Need to know the word not ending - If [n] for syllabicity why not [r] or other sonorant - Zero [∅] - Deer Allopmorphs of Past - Call - -ed /d/ → [d] - Want - -ed /d/ → [ɪ] + [d] (by V insertion) - Wash - -ed /d/ → [t] (by assimilation) - Write - Wrote [rot] (by Ablaut) - Leave - Left [lɛft] (by suppletion) - dive - Dove [dov] (by Ablaut) or -d [d] - Put - Put [pʊt] (by Zero) - Go - Went [wɛnt] (by Suppletion) DISCUSSION 9/26 - Insertion rule comes first - Assimilation comes second - Voice or voiceless READINGS: CHAPTER 5 Syntax and Lexical Categories - Syntax - Describes the systematic ways inw hich words are combined to create well-formed phrases, clauses and sentences - Describes the systematic ways in which clauses and sentences combine to create more complex sentences - Lexical categories (parts of speech) - Describe classes of words that behave similarly in the grammar of a language - Form - Refers tot he grammatical or lexical class of a word - What kind of word it is - Ex. noun or preposition - Function - Describes the roles of a word in a phrase or clause - What the word does in a grammatical environment - Ex: functions as a subject or an adverbial Open-Class Lexical Categories - Four major lexical categories - Nouns - Persons, places things - Ideas, concepts, states, activities, time - Possible to figure out that a word is a noun even without knowing what it means - Adjectives - Verbs - Adverbs - - Morphological Description of Nouns - Nouns in English become plural through the addition of an allomorph of the morpheme PLURAL most often by the inflectional ending of -s - Syntactic Position of Nouns - Can occur after determiners plus adjectives, or just adjective - Ex: - det + noun = the weather - Det + adj + noun = the bad weather - Adj + noun = good weather - Countable nouns - Are quantifiable - They can be counted - Can take plural -s - Uncountable nouns - Mass nouns describe ideas or other referents that cannot be counted Adjectives - Modify the meaning of nouns - Morphological description of adjectives - Some derivational suffixes indicate adjectiveness - Ex: -al, -able, -like, -ful, -y - Have comparative and superlative forms which are formed by the addition of inflectional endings -er/-est or of the modiferies more/mnost - English follows the general rule that adjective of one syllable take the tinflectional endings (tall, taller, tallest) - Adjectives of three or more syllables take more/most (beaitufl, more beautiful, most beautiful) - Adjectives of two syllables can often do either - - Syntactic Position of Adjectives - Can appear in attributive or predicative position - Attributive - Refers to the position before the noun (and after the determiner if present) - Predicative - Refers to the position after the verb (the predicate is the verb and other elements it governs in a clause. In the clause grammar makes me happy grammar is the subject and maes me happy is the predicate) - The adjective can modify the subject or in some cases the object. - After a linking very such as be or seem, predicative adjectives describe the subject - Verbs - Have five basic morphology forms - The bare form - Ex: nap - The third person singular present-tense form - Ex: naps - The past-tense form - Ex: napped - The present participle - Ex:napping - The past participle - Ex: napped - Conjugate - Change form - Verbs change to indicate grammatical categories - Person (first, second, third) - Number (singular or plural) - Tense - Present tense (nonpast) - Past tense (past) - - Aspect - Marks whether the action of the verb is completed (the perfect) or continuous (the progressive) - The perfect and progressive can co-occur - Ex: I have been loving this chapter - Voice - Describes the relationship of the subject to the action of the verb - Ex: agent, recipient - The active voice is distinguished from the passive voice through syntactic devices including the inflection on the past participle - Ex: I broke the record → the record was broken - Mood - Indicative - The mood of statements and questions - Inflects for person number and tense - Imperative - The mood of commands, which uses the bar infinitive - Subjunctive - The mood of conditions, which employs the bare infinitive for present tense and is identical to the regular past tense in the past tense except for invariant were for “to be” - Expresses something wished for - Ex: i wish ice cream were healthier) - Morphological Description of Verbs - Bare infinitive - For all verbs except be, have, do and go the bare infinitive form serves as the base for the other four forms marked by inflectional endings or internal vowel changes - Past tense - Majority of verbs from the past tense through the addition of the inflectional ending -ed - - Suppletion - The change in a verb like go to the very irregular past-tense form went - The present particple - Formed through the addition of the inflectional ending -ing, appears in progressive constructions, both past and preent - Ex: I am thinking, I was thinking - The progressive aspect - Describes a continuing action, whethter in the past or present and is formed with the appropriate from to be + present participle - The perfect aspect - Formed by combining the appropriate form of have+ past participle - Indicates a completed action either before the presnet moment or before a specific moment in the past - Ex: we have finished studying, we had finished studying before the electricity went out - Syntastic Position of Verbs - Appear in a few distinctive spots - After auxiliary verbs - Alone in imperative constructions - Alone after a subject - Between a subject and an object - Transitivity - Whether a verb takes a direct object - The complement - The phrase or clause that follows the verb to complete the verb phrase - Intransitive - Verbs appearing with no object - Ex: we sleep - Transitive - Verbs appearing with a direct object - Ex: we made cookies - Ditransitive - Verbs appearing with booth a direct and indirect object - Ex: we gave sue the cookies - Linking - Verbs connecting a subject-predicative to a subject - Ex: We are nice - Object-predicative - Verbs connecting an object-predicative to an object - Ex: sue called us nice - The direct object - Described as the recipient of the verbs action - The indirect object - For whom the action is done - Linking verbs - Modify either the subject or object of the clause - Ex: appear, seem, - Connect a subject-predicative Adverbs - Modify verbs - Ex: walk quickly - Modify adjective - Ex: truly beautiful - Modify other adverbs - Wonderfully wuickly - Temporal adverbs - Describe when an action or state occurs - Ex: yesterday, soon - Manner adverbs - Describe how an action or state occurs - Ex: quickly, safely - Discourse adverbs (or sentence adverbs) - Describe the speaker’s or writer’s stance on the clause or sentence - Ex: frankly, bluntly - Morphological description of adverbs - Often end in the derivational suffix -ly - Syntactic Position of Adverbs - Do not adhere to a fixed position in the sentence - The can often occur at the beginning or end of a clause as well as directly before or after a main verb - Adverb cannot be placed diretly between an adjective and noun that the adjective modifies Closed Class Lexical Categories - Prepositions - Is everywhere a squirrel can go with respect to a tree - Ex: up, down, around, to - Conjunctions - Connect things - Three major types - Coordinating - For, and, nor, but, or and yet (FANBOY) - Connect words or phrases of the same category to create a coordinated phrase in that category - Ex: - Nouns and verbs → noun and noun = noun phrase - Stay or go →verb or verb = verb phrase - Safe yet sorry → adjective yet adjective = adjective phrase - Over the river and to the woods → prepositional phrase - Correlative - Refer to paired conjunctions as either/or, neither/nor - Function much like coordinating conjunctions except that they involve a conjunction at the beginning of each phrase or clause - Ex: either cookies or candy - Subordinating - Connect two clauses - A main clause and a dependent or subordinate clause - Subordinate clause - depends on the main clause to provide context or complete its meaning - Ex: because, although, when, after, before, unless, if, while, in order that, as long as - Complementizers - Create subordinate clauses that function normally (like a noun phrase) - Ex: that - Pronouns - Stand in for nouns or noun phrases - Closed class - Behave like nouns - Personal pronouns - Have three persons (first, second, third) - Two numbers (singular and plural) - Three cases (subject, object, possessive) - Reflexive forms - Indefinite pronouns - Stand in for an unknown or unspecified element in a clause - Ex: anyone can do that - - Interrogative pronouns - Stand in for an unknown elements in a clause in order to create a questions - Ex: who us coming to dinner - Demonstrative pronouns - Point to things eihter previoulsy mentioned in the text or the physical environment - Ex: i took the 47 bus- that is the one that goes downtown - Relative pronouns - Act as the subject or object of a dependent/subordinate clause to link the clause to a preceding noun phrase - Ex: who/whom/whose, that, which, whoever/whomever, and whichever Determiners - Encompass the class of function words that introduce noun phrases, often indicating for example - Determinacy - Ex: Indefinite articles a/an versus definite article the - Quantity - Ex: some, many, all - Number - One, two, first, second - Pragmatic functions such as specification - Ex: this versus that Auxiliary Verbs - “Helping verbs” - Occur before main or lexical verbs in order to indicate time, aspect, modality, emphasis, or to assist in the formation of negative, interrogative, and passive constructions - Modal auxiliary - Can express two very differnet things Epistemic - What is necessary/possible given known facts or conditions - Ex - He must have overslept - She may be ill - You can’t have read the instructions - The storm shoud be over soon Deontic - Expressing obligation, permission - Ex - He must apologize - She may take as many as she needs - You can’t smoke in here - We should call the police Challenges to Categorization - The suffix -ing - Inflectional when it signals that a verb is being used in a progressive construction - Ex: the students are hoping to learn why people say hopefully is wrong - Derivational -ing appears in nouns that do not refer directly to the action of the related verb but rather for example to a finished product or metaphorical result - Ex: a building, an opening - -ing forms can act as modifiers Noun Modifiers - Nouns can be used as noun modifiers - EX: My English class textbook - My English class grammar textbook cover image - Occur between the determiner(s) and the head noun, like adjectives - Can appear only in the attributive position Split Infinitive - Occurs when an adverb, an adverbial, or is not placed between the particle to and the bare infinitive form of a verb, thereby splitting the two parts of the verb infinitive - Ex: to boldly go to where no man has gone before Sentence-Final Prepositions LECTURE 10/2 - Allo - An allophone is any variant of a PHONEME. - An allomorph is any variant of a MORPHEME. Allomorphs of {PLURAL} - Suffix /z/ →[z] in dogs, cans, bottles, sodas (nonce words: wugs, toves) Allophone: Suffix /z/ → [s] in cats (due to assimilation) Not really an allophone because /z/ doesn’t change: Suffix -es [ɪz] in horses (due to vowel insertion) - Suffix /aks/+/n̩/ [ˈak.sn̩], ?[ˈak.sɪz] in oxen (unlikely due to /z/ → [n]) Need to know the word, not ending - If [n] for syllabicity, why not [r] or another sonorant? - Zero [∅] in deer [[deer]N Ø]N-PL - Ablaut (vowel change) in women [ˈwɪ.ˌmɛn]~[ˈwɪ.mɪ̆ n] (cf. singular is woman [ˈwʊ.ˌmɛn]~[ˈwʊ.mɪ̆ n]) - Suppletion people (cf. singular is person; [ˈpʰɝ.ˌsən] or [ˈpʰɝ.ˌsn̩] and [ˈpʰi.ˌpʊl] or [ˈpʰi.ˌpl̩ ]) Open-class Lexical Categories - Nouns - Verbs - Adjectives - Ad + ject + ive - Adverbs - Ad +verb Nouns and Verb Morphology Nouns Verbs Nouns add –s for plural with Verbs add –ed for past tense a few exceptions, with a few exceptions, e.g. children, deer, nuclei e.g. went, bought, kept Nouns add possessive ’s Verbs add –s 3rd-person singular present tense Nouns can add these Verbs can add these derivational endings -ity, - derivational endings: ness, -ation, -er, -ion, -ize, -ate, among others -ment, among others Noun and Verb Syntax Nouns Verbs Nouns may follow determiners: the / a Verbs may follow an auxiliary verb: have, this/that/these/those will, do can, may, shall, will, must used to, my/you/his/her/our/their had better Nouns may be modified by an adjective May be modified by an adverb Nouns may be followed by a preposition Verbs may be followed by a noun or by a and another noun preposition and noun Nouns follow prepositions Verbs can begin a sentence with an imperative! Noun and Verb Semantics Nouns Verbs Nouns sometimes refer to a person, place, or Verbs sometimes refer to actions. But there thing. But there are many are many exceptions, exceptions, e.g. e.g. seem, like, understand, formulate, finish, education, idea, happiness, knowledge wish, exist, be, grow Countable & Uncountable Nouns Countable Uncountable Plural -s No plurality Need types of _____ ?fewer ?less A ______ (sg), These _____ (pl) *A _____ (sg), * These _____ (pl) *Much _____ Much ______ Verb Conjugations - Tense - Past, present - Aspect - Perfect (completed), progressive (ongoing) - Voice - Active, passive - Mood - Indicative, imperative, subjunctive Verb Types - Intransitive - No object - T. sleeps - Transitive - One, direct object - T. caught a fish - Distransitive - Two objects, direct and indirect - T. game M. a book - T. gave a book to M. - Linking - Connect the subject and object like an “=” cannot passivize - T. is the president - Object-predicate - Looks like the direct object is a verbless sentence - T. called our friend crazy Adjectives and Adverbs Ad- “towards” - Adjective - OED: a word or unit which designates an attribute or qualifies a noun so as to describe it more fully - Adverb - OED: a word or unit which modified the meaning of a verb, adjective or another adverb expressing manner, place time or degree -

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