Linguistics Midterm

Phoenetics

speech as a physical process

the study of the articulation and physical properties of speech

what is the minimal unit in phoenetics?

sound or phone

phonology

the study of sound patterns in a language system

phonotactics

deals with rules governing how sounds can be arranged and combined in a particular language

ex: English forbids [tl] and [dl] onsets, but many languages do not

minimal pairs

pairs of words in a language that differ by only one sound (phoneme) and have different meanings

ex: rope vs robe

morphology

the study of the structure of words and how words are formed

examines how roots, prefixes and suffixes combine to make new words

what is the minimal unit in morphology?

morpheme

morpheme

the smallest unit of meaning in a language

cannot be broken down into smaller parts without losing or changing meaning

ex: unhappiness —> un + happy + ness

types of morphemes

1. roots: the core meaning (i.e. happy)

2. derivational affixes: change the word’s meaning or part of speech (i.e. act —> active —> activity

3. inflectional affixes: mark grammatical changes (tense, number, case) without changing word’s class —> dog to dogs or walk to walked

the combinatory system

how morphemes combine in different language

isolating (i.e. Chinese): few or no affixes, each word is usually one morpheme

agglutinating (i.e. Turkish): words are built together by stringing together many morphemes

synthetic: combines morphemes within words but less transparently

analytic: relies more on word order than morphology

syntax 

the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences

ex: the man saw the dog with the telescope

semantics

the study of meaning of words and phrases

studies the literal, not figurative, meaning of words and phrases

compositionality

the meaning of a bigger structure is composed of the meaning of its parts

meaning of a sentence depends on the meaning of the individual words and how they are combined according to grammar

ex: the dog bit the man vs the man bit the dog

reference

what words refer to in the real world

ex: the president refers to an actual person

truth value

whether a sentence is true or false in a given situation

ex: the sky is blue (true) vs cats are reptiles (false)

symbolic logic

used to represent meaning formally, using symbols

pragmatics

the study of how context contributes to meaning

nonliteral meaning that interacts with context and nonverbal communication

ex: I’m cold can mean:

• my body temp is lower than normal

• can I borrow your jacket?

• can we go home?

descriptivism

objectively observe and analyze how language is actually used without any judgment

seeks to describe reality without the bias of preconceived ideas of how it ought to be

prescriptivism

the establishment of rules defining proper usage (proper form) of language

must be learned

can address spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax and semantics

linguistic competence

the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language

involving subconscious knowledge of language, intuitive understanding of language rules

linguistic performance

the actual use of language in concrete situations

involves slips of the tongue, memory, distraction, attention etc

mental grammar

a speaker’s implicit knowledge of their language

allows us to recognize which sound patterns, words and sentences are possible in our language

can understand and produce the different forms of a word they’ve never heard before

ex: npum and kpum sound wrong in English, but pum could be an English word

ex: the past tense of blick (new word) should be blicked and the plural form should be blicks

theoretical linguistics

basic principles that make up human language

understand universal properties of language

historical linguistics

language change and the reconstruction of linguistic history

how languages change over time

identifying relationships between older forms of language

psycholinguistics

psychology of language

how humans acquire, process and produce language

ex: language learning and language processing

computational linguistics

algorithms for computer analysis of text and speech

ex: speech recognition, machine translation, and natural language processing

sociolinguistics

how social factors (class, gender, region, age, identity) affect language

ex: dialects, language change in society, variation in speech communities

dialectology

the study of dialects

typology

studying and classifying languages according to their structural features

ex: whether a language puts a verb before or after the object

discourse analysis

studying and modeling how conversations play out

ex: looks at convos, storytelling and written language to see how people organize ideas, take turns, or express stance

4 qualities of language

1. discreteness: possesses set of combinable individual units

2. grammar: system of rules for combining individual units

3. productivity: ability to use langauge to create infinite set of messages

4. displacement: ability to talk about things that aren’t right in front of you

language as a discrete combinatorial system

language is made up of a finite amount of discrete elements (phonemes, morphemes, phrases) that are combined to make larger structures with properties distinct from their elements

although the elements are finite, the combinations are endless

discrete infinity

language has no upper limit on how long or complex an expression can be or become

can always extend a sentence or keep adding descriptions

demonstrates recursion

recursion

the ability to embed one linguistic structure insider another of the same type over and over again 

ex: I think [that she said [that he left]].

mental grammar might allow infinite recursion, but in real life (performance) we cannot process endless embedding due to memory or lung capacity

honey bee case study

• bees can communicate —> quantity, distance and direction of food

• instinctual ability, not learned

• compared to language, it is potentially productive, has a discrete combinatorial system, but is limited in expressiveness and largely iconic

vervet monkey case study

• have three alarm calls: for leopards, snakes or eagles

• innate calls

• learn through observation which species of every predator class is dangerous

• infant vervets might send off false alarms

• communication?

  • can be used to affect behavior of others, but not used when alone 

  • no evidence call system is used to affect knowledge state of other vervets, keep calling even when others have seen danger

Nim Chimsky case

Herbert Terrence tried to teach chimp language to find out how chimps think and have him become interpreter for wild chimps

Nim was able to produce repetitions of the same signs and repetitions of signs made by trainer immediately prior

His mean length utterance did not rise, had no morphology, no syntax, just imitations and calls for eating, drinking or playing

Had knowledge of many words but no grammer —> discrete but not combinatorial system

phoneme

smallest disctinctive sound unit in a language; a sound that can change meaning

ex: p and b are different phonemes as they distinguish pat from bat

phonemes are written between slashes / /

contrastive distribution

to identify, look for a minimal pair

ex: sin vs seen

because changing the vowel changes the meaning, these vowels represent different phonemes

complementary distribution

if two similar sounds never occur in the same environment, they are allophones of the same phoneme

ex: the p in pin vs spin

• in pin, the ph is aspirated but in spin, it is not

they are allophones (different realizations of the same phoneme, not different phonemes)

BUT

• sometimes a sound that is an allophone in one context can be a distinct phoneme in another (i.e sue, zoo)

• the /s/ and /z/ sounds can behave as allophones (i.e. cats —> s, dogs —> z)

• allophones are usually phoentically related to one another —> if they’re too different, they can’t be allophones even if they never overlap