Intro to Linguistics Midterm

Grammar

a system of rules that dictates how words are structured, changed, and combined to form clear sentences in a language.

Core components of grammar:

phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics

phonology

rules for combining sounds into words (phono=sound)

morphology:

rules of word formation morph=word

syntax

rules for combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences (syntax, sentence)

semantics

rules for assigning meaning to words (literal meanings)

descriptive grammar

how do you speak?
based on empirical data, grammatically correct.

serves as a description of the actual rules of usage native speakers of a language follow/
looks at mental grammar
intuited through early exposure to the language NOT explicitly taught rules.

Example of descriptive grammar rule

looking at group of words:
-blue bag
-big blue bag
-*bag blue
-*blue big bag
-big bag
We see that the orders of certain words are correct, and some are not. The descriptions of the correct formations are descriptive grammar rules. (based on evidence)
Rule: there are nouns and adjectives. adjectives must come before the nouns they describe. if there are multiple adjectives, those describing size come before those describing color.

prescriptive grammar

subjective/opinion based
Artificial rules of usage that attempt to change the rules of a speaker’s mental grammar.
usually assertions by an authority about what is “good” or “correct” in a language and what is “incorrect” or “bad”
these have to be explicitly taught and not something a part of a native speaker’s mental grammar/intuition through simple early exposure of the language alone.

Ex of prescriptive grammar

preposition placement:

Prepositions should be placed at the beginning, but most english native speakers place them at the end
“In which building do you live” vs “what building do you live in?”
prescriptive rule: prepositions should always be placed at the beginning of questions. not actually a grammar rule based on evidence, doesn’t align with what native speakers have in their mental grammars.

Linguistic competence

knowledge of words and grammar (what speakers can do)
grammar + lexicon

Linguistic performance

how we use this knowledge in speech production and comprehension (what speakers actually do when speaking)

Sound symbolism

words whose pronunciations suggest their meaning
ex: onomatopoeic words

General or universal grammar

rules in grammar that pertain to all languages.
these rules allow us to learn and use any language

What is UG (universal grammar)

it’s part of our biologically endowed human language faculty. Like the blueprint that all languages follow that forms a part of a child’s innate capacity for language learning.
Chompsky believed that sentences we use are not impacted by any stimuli.

UG and child language development

children learn language so quickly and easily because the laws of language or UG are part of their biological endowment, allowing them to learn and apply grammatical rules just by being exposed to the language and not being explicitly taught anything (poverty of stimulus: not being exposed to every rule but can still apply rules and create their own unique sentences)

True or false: knowledge, use, and accquisition of language are dependent on the abilitly to produce and hear sounds

FALSE. Deaf people develop and acquire language in the same stages as hearing children, showing that there is a biological factor to language present in everyone even if they can’t hear.

3 properties of human language

discreteness/creativity
displacement
language acquisition

Discreteness

the distinct, separate units (like morphemes, phonemes, words, and sentences that combine to create meaning. (due to this language can be called a discrete combinatorial system)
gives human language its unique creativity: its ability to rearrange units of words into an infinite number of expressions and create different messages/meanings

Displacement

the capacity to talk or sign messages that are unrelated to here and now (not influenced by a stimulus)

displacement and discreteness are

the two fundamental properties of human language that distinguish it from the language systems of animals.

language acquisition

the 3rd part of human language: the way we solidify our mental grammar in our youth (critical period)
language acquisition is partially innate and partially learned.

human language and animals ex

birds: have birdcalls: one or more short notes that convey danger, feeding, nesting, flocking, etc. and bird songs: complex patterns of notes used to stake out territory and attract mates
unique creativity/discreteness: while birds are able to sing the same song in different ways by alternating between different sounds to change intensity and demonstrate the strength of their emotions, they cannot use the same units/segments to express different messages with diff meanings (so it’s not discrete/creative like human language.
Displacement: messages conveyed by bird’s songs and calls are limited and relate only to a bird’s immediate environment and needs (so they cannot convey messages that are unrelated to the here and now like humans can with language)
Birds share a similar way of acquiring language as humans. in many species, the full adult version of a birdsong is acquired in several stages (like it is for children’s language development) There is also a short specific period after birth that a bird must hear the adult song or else song acquisition doesn’t occur, which is the same as the critical period for acquiring language in humans. involves both innate and learned structure like human language. but it does not meat the discreteness or displacement so it doesn’t resemble human language entirely.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

idea that the structure of a language influences how its speakers perceive the world around them.
has a strong and weak form.

Strong form of sapir-whorf hypothesis:

Linguistic determinism: idea that language we speak determines how we perceive and think about the world. language acts as a filter on reality. THIS IS FALSE

evidence against linguistic determinism

people’s thoughts and perceptions are not restricted by or determined by the words and structures of their languages
evidence: we are able to translate things between languages. If we could not think about something for which our language had no specific word, translations wouldn’t be possible. But they are.
Learning a second language is possible, reflecting that we are able to think and understand aspects of another language and actually learn it even if those aspects are not present in our own language.
Infants wouldn’t be able to learn their first words or languages if we could not think about something for which we do not have the word for, but they clearly can and do! We also learn new ways of thinking when we live in a new location/culture.

hopi indians: despite not having a tense system in their language, they have other expressions for time,, including words for the days of the week, parts of the day, seasons, etc. They use calendars and devices for time telling demonstrating that they understand the concept of time despite not having tenses in their language.
ability to perceive colors: while languages differ in words for colors, speakers can readily perceive colors that are not named in their language.

Weaker form of sapir-whorf

linguistic relativism: says that languages differ in the categories they encode and therefore speakers of different languages think about the world in different ways (better description for what’s happening, has some evidence to support it so not false)

exs supporting linguistic relativism:

languages differ in how they refer to colors on the color spectrum. some have blue and green as one word. some use different words to describe different shades, etc. evidence shows that ppl who speak languages with more words differentiating between different colors have an easier time differentiating between shades of a color, but this doesn’t mean that people who don’t have many words for different colors cannot perceive them or know what they are at all. They also differ in how they express locations. some languages only use cardinal directions to express directions and locations and no prepositions. These are differences in the encoding of info, and they affect how people can see the world. ppl who can only express locations with cardinal directions have a different way of seeing the world, they become extremely skilled at knowing the cardinal directions of where they grew up instinctively and accurately. become like human compasses almost.

mental lexicon

like a mental dictionary: stores words as sound-meaning units (pronounciation + meaning), spelling, grammatical categories, descriptive rules for grammar that we use to apply to words we haven’t seen before

content words:

nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. they denote concepts such as objects, actions, attributes, and ideas we can think about (ex: children, build, seldom, beautiful)
open class words=content words sometimes. we regularly add new words to these classes like “Facebook” or “blog” which are both nouns that didn’t always exist in our lexicons.

function words

words that do not have a clear lexical meaning or obvious concept associated with them. they specify grammatical relations and have little or no semantic content. called closed class words bc we don’t really add new articles. conjunctions, prepositions, or pronouns to our language.

includes conjunctions like “and, or, and but”, prepositions like “in, above, of, out”, articles “the, a, an”, complementizers like “if, that, whether”, and pronouns like “it, me, I, he, mine”

morpheme

most elemental unit of grammatical form. can be one word(monomorphemic), affixes, single letters like “a” in asexual or amoral, or bound roots like “-ceive” “-cept”, “mis-” “-ject” or multiple syllables like “crocodile, hallucinate, helicopter”

what fundamental property of human language does the decomposition of words into morphemes illustrate?

discreteness

Base morphemes:

morphemes that stand as words on their own: boy, desire, gentle, man, woman, etc

Bound morphemes

morphemes that only convey meaning in combination with other morphemes.

affixes: attach to words but are never words on their own: -ish, -ness, -ly, pre-, un-, etc.
Always attach at beginning, middle, or end of word.
Ex: luke-warm =somewhat warm, but luke on its own doesn’t rlly have meaning
huckle-berry: type of berry (huckle on its own doesnt mean anything really

affixes

suffix, prefix, infix, circumfix (affix is umbrella term for all these)

prefix

morpheme coming before other morphemes

suffix

comes after other morphemes or at the end

infix

morphemes inserted into other morphemes (put in the middle)
Ex: word fikas in turkish becomes fumikas with um being the infix here. fikas means strong and the addition of the infix makes it “to be strong”
Ex in english: in-bloody-possible. ri-fricken-diculous

circumfixes

(also called discontinuous morpheme) morphemes attached to a base morpheme both initially and finally (at the beginning and end)
Ex: negative being formed in chickasaw uses this. (the prefix ik and the suffix o) chokma (he is good) becomes ik-chokma-o (he is not good)

How is a stem formed?

when a root morpheme is combined with an affix:
system + atic forms new stem systematic. systematic + un gives unsystematic as the new stem, and you can keep going.

morphemes and meanings

sounds of morphemes can show up in words and mean different things.
ex: morpheme “er” shows up in words like painter, prettier, or finger. in painter and prettier we know these sound the same and look the same but are separate morphemes bc they have diff meanings “person who paints” or “more pretty” homophonous morpheme
finger however doesn’t have the morpheme er, it has the same sound and look. but we know you cant be “more fing” or “a person who fings” so it doesnt make sense.
two morphemes can also mean the same thing but look different (allomorphy): “er” and “ster” mean one who does something younger = youngster. monster however doesnt work because you can’t have “one who mons” or someone that “is mon”.

inflectional morphemes

bound morphemes that have a grammatical function and mark properties such as tense, number, person, etc, THEY NEVER CHANGE THE PART OF SPEECH OF THE STEMS THEY’RE ATTATCHED TO.
-productive, so they attach freely to almost every base except irregular ones like foot which becomes feet in plural not “foots”
follow derivational morphemes in a word.

what are all the inflectional morphemes?

There are 8.
-s (third person singular) She feeds
-ing (progressive) She’s feeding
-s (plural) dogs
-s (possessive) Alice’s cats
-er (comparative) fluffier
-est (superlative) happiest
-ed (past-tense) dated
-en (past-participle) They were eaten
everything else is derivational

Derivational morpheme

When bound morphemes are added to a base and create a new word with new meaning.
ex: -ify, -arian, -cation. precede inflectional morphemes in a word
word that comes from adding a derivational morpheme is called a derived word.
2 classes:

adding derivational affix in class 1 slightly changes pronunciation. ex: specific, c has “k” sound. but specify: c has “s” sound.
class 2: adding affix doesnt change pronunciation: ex: er, ful, ish, less, ly, ness = baker, wishful.
affixes from 1st class cannot be added to bases with affixes from second class, however affixes from second class can be added to bases with second or first class affixes.
ex: needless need+2nd class affix “less” needless + ify doesnt work!!

Ex: needless + ness + ly all works!

reduplicaton

inflecting a word through repertition of part or all of a word
ex: savali —→ savavali
emphasizes different meaning

noun

person, place, thing: table, cat, theoy

adjectives

describe nouns: cool, red, gigantic, pretty

adverbs

describe verbs: swiftly, quickly, softly, really, frequently

verbs

action words like walk, run, talk, eat, do, be, would

prepositions

location/position words: at, on, beside, below, through

conjunctions

connect two independent clauses: and, but, so,

articles/determiners:

introduce a noun/give info about number: the, a/an, this, that, these

pronouns

replace noun in a sentence (I, you, she, her, it, they, ours, mine)

auxillaries

helping words: be, am, is, are, was, have, do

bound roots

-ceive, -ept, -ject. only have meaning when combined with other morphemes like bound morphemes, however, unlike bound morphemes, bound roots give the stem its core meaning.

morphemes consist of

bound morphemes (affixes) and roots (-ceive, -mit, -ject)
Free morphemes (content words like nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs) and (function words like conjunctions, articles, pronouns, auxiliaries)

multimophemic words

root +affix root is typically a free morpheme

hierarchal structure

words and sentences have a hierarchal structure/ order in which morphemes or words are supposed to be grammatically.
morphological trees for morphemes of a word: include root word, affixes + part of speech (work way up from root. ensure that the order of affix matches on tree. ex: if it’s a suffix don’t put it before the part of speech)
phrase structure trees for words in a sentence/phrase: use x-bar theory, have words follow same order as sentence on the tree.

accidental gaps/lexical gaps

words that conform to the rules of word formation but are not actually a part of the vocab
ex: blick, slarm, krobe conform to rules of language but aren’t words.
“bnick” not a lexical gap bc no english word has this sound “bn” at the start of it.

backformations:

morphological process in which a word is created by removing a real or perceived affix from an existing word. (occurs through incorrect morphological analyses.) ends up being used by so many speakers it becomes a part of the language/lexicon
ex: pea came from singular word “pease” because speakers thought “pease” was a plural word.

compounds

2 words in 1.
there are right handed and left handed compounds

right handed compounds

the right most word of the compound is the head of the compound word and determines the word’s broad meaning and grammatical category
ex: bittersweet: sweet is the head of the compound, showing that the whole word is describing a kind of sweetness and that it is an adjective.
exceptions are when the rightmost word in the compound is a preposition like meet-up, meltdown etc.

left handed compounds

left most word determines the meaning. Ex: attorney-general: type of attorney according to the left most word. passer-by=someone who passes
these tend to have plural inflections on the inside. attorneys-general, passers-by

malapropism

confusion of a word through misinterpretation of its morphemes= usually for humerous effect

syntactic category

part of speech: can be phrasal or lexical
phrasal:np, vp, pp, ap,advp.
lexical: noun, verb, preposition, adjective, adverb, determiner (det), tense, complementizers, modals

determiners

articles like a, the
demonstratives like this, that, these, and those
quantities like each, every, my, several

constituency tests

stand-alone, replacement by “pro-form” or pronoun, move-as-a-unit test: includes clefting, passivisation, and topicalization
only needs to pass one constituent test to be considered one, but it’s better that it can pass more than one.

tense

includes modal auxillaries like may, might, could, can, shall, must, will, would

Complementizers

occur in sentences that have two independent clauses (complementizer is at the point in the sentence where the other independent clause (sentence) starts.
ex: that, for, and, if, whether
sally thought that she was amazing. “sally thought” and “she was amazing” are two independent clauses

Stand-alone test

if a group of words, or a word, in a sentence can stand on its own, it is a constituent.
tested by asking a question using the rest of the words in the question and excluding the possible consitutent as the answer.
ex sentence: the child found a puppy. is a puppy a constituent? test it!
What did the child find? A puppy. yes it is!

replacement by pro form

pronouns can replace groups of words in a sentence or the group of words can be replaced with do/did
Ex: where did the child find a puppy? “the child found him at the park!” this replaces a puppy successfully
Ex: The boy found a puppy and the child did too! (replaces found a puppy)
-can also replace prepositional phrase with a pronoun like word: (there, then)

Ex: the puppy played in the garden—→ the puppy played there.
Ex: the puppy played in the house on wednesday. the puppy played in the house then.
Ex: the child found it. (a puppy)

move-as-a-unit

clefting: use format “it was _______ that (rest of the sentence without tested constituent)
ex: the cat in the hat made a mess in the house: it was the cat in the hat that made a mess in the house. the cat in the hat is a constituent.
Ex: it was a mess that the cat in the hat made.

topicalization: putting stress on the phrase you are testing to see if it still makes sense. pit the phrase/word in the front of the sentence and see if it makes sense.
Ex: In the house, the cat in the hat made a mess.
Passivization: putting the direct object/np in the front of the sentence, making it passive instead of active. ONLY FOR TRANSITIVE VERBS AND NPS

Ex: A mess(was direct object of transitive verb made) was made BY the cat in the hat (subject)
EX:
Active: "Jane opened the door."

• Passive: "The door was opened by Jane. switched the places of subject and direct object, added verb + by

truth conditions

circumstances in which a sentence is true or false

semantics

the study of lingusitic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences.

lexical semantics

the meanings of words and the meaning of relationships among words

compositional semantics

concerned with how the meanings of words are combined to form the meanings of sentences and phrases

pragmatics

the study of how context impacts meaning

compositional/truth conditional semantics

calculates the truth condition of a sentence by putting together the meanings of smaller units following semantic rules

tautologies

a restricted number of sentences that are always true regardless of circumstances (also called analytic sentences)
Ex: circles are round, cats are felines, that door is brown, a person who is dead is not alive, a square has 4 corners.

contradictions

sentences that are always false. sentence can be a contradiction if there is no situation where both aspects are true or false
EX: circles are square, dogs have horns, turtles can fly.
sentences are contradictions if one entails the negation of the other

“jack is alive” and “jack is dead” are contradictory bc “jack is alive” entails the negation of “jack is not dead”

entailment

meaning relationship between two sentences. if we know one sentence is true then the other sentence is true. If one sentence is false, then the other sentence is false.
These are typically one directional and negating the sentences reverses the relationship
Ex: If i know “jack swims beautifully” is true, then I know the sentence “jack swims” is true. However, i can’t know “jack swims beautifully” just from knowing that “jack swims” is true. that’s why it’s one directional.
if i say “jack doesn’t swim” is true, I know “jack doesn’t swim beautifully” is also true (negation)
two sentences are paraphrases (synonymous) if they entail each other.

principle of compositionality

idea that the meaning of an expression is composed of the meanings of its parts and how they are centered structurally.

Semantic rule 1 (intransitive predicates)

If the meaning of NP subject (an individual) is a member of the meaning of a VP predicate (set of individuals doing that verb), then the sentence is true, otherwise it’s false
ex: Jack swims. This is true if jack, who is the subject and most likely refers to an individual is among a group of individuals who swim. If the group of ppl who swim was sally and mark, and I said “jack swims” it would be false.

Semantic rule 2 (transitive predicates)

establishes meaning of predicate as the set of individuals (object NPS) who are experiencing the VP, basically it finds the relationship the transitive verb creates between a set of individuals.
EX: Mack hugged laura (hugged is the transitive verb) the set of individuals are those who get hugged by Mack. this sentence is true if the list of pairs of people being hugged by mack includes laura, and false otherwise.

conjunctions and negation

OR: picks out the union of two sets

• AND: picks out the intersection of two sets

• NOT: picks out the complement of a set/sets

semantic anaomaly

when individual words with meaning cannot be combined w/semantic rules and have meaning
ex: colorless green ideas sleep furiously

synonym

words or phrases that have the same meaning in some or all contexts

antonyms

words that are opposite in meaning
3 types: complementary, and gradable pairs, and relational opposites

complementary pairs:

alive/dead alive=not dead dead=not alive has symmetry kind of

gradable pairs

meaning of adjective in these pairs is related to the noun they modify
ex: big/small (modifying size) fast/slow (relating to speed)

relational opposites

teacher/pupil, parent/child, give/receive, buy/sell. they are both related to the same topic but direct opposites.
giant/blue would not fit in antonym category bc words are not opposites, they have no relation

homonyms (homophones)

words pronounced the same way but have different meanings: bare, bear

polysemous

when a word has multiple meanings that are related conceptually or historically:

diamond: jewel or a baseball field
chip: thin piece of potato, wood, technology, etc.

hyponymy

relationship between more general terms v.s. more specific version of that term
cookies/chocolate chip, or peanut butter, etc.
colors/red, or blue ,or white
lion is a hyponym of feline

completements vs adjuncts

complement: direct object nps, pps that modify nouns, can only have one of these in a sentence, ALWAYS next to head. Ex: V NP in a verb phrase. the head is the verb and the complement is the noun phrase.

Adjuncts: adjectives or adverbs
pps that modify VPS
can always add more of these. ALWAYS next to a bar level EX: A N’ or adv N’

dieictic words

words that recieve part of their meaning via context and orientation of the speaker
ex: it, that, she, adverbs like here, there, now, today: prepositions like behind, before etc.

linguistic contenxt

type of reference resolution(understanding what the reference is referring to), anything that has been uttered in the discourse prior or along with the pronoun

situational context

anything non-linguistic such as background knowledge or nonverbal communication

implicature

inference based not only on an utterance but also on what the speaker is trying to convey
ex: do you know how to change a tire? “I know how to call a tow truck” implication is that the person doesn’t know how to change a tire. can be used for many reasons, now wanting to admit it, wanting to be funny, wanting to be polite, etc

implications are cancellable by adding additional info. “No, but i can call a tow truck”