Linguistics exam 2

syntax

study of how words/morphemes combine to form phrases and sentences

focuses on the structure between words

word order

in english, subjects typically precede verbs, then objects follow (SVO)

~40% of world’s languages have this word order pattern

SOV is more common ~44%

VOS, OVS, OSV are rare

english adjective order

determiner, opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose/qualifier, noun

drunk old sailors always sing country on muddy piers, naked

recursion

when something is defined in terms of itself

when a syntactic structure can contain itself

sentence ex: [I think that [they will major in psychology]]

noun phrase ex: [the enemy of [my enemy]]

why are there an infinite number of possible grammatical sentences in a language?

recursion

syntactic knowledge

relates to syntactic categories (parts of speech)

is hierarchical (collections of words behave as a single functional unit)

we can understand and produce sentences containing word pairs that have never occurred

lexical ambiguity

comes from a single word having more than one meaning

ambiguity in the lexicon (homophony)

ex: she went to the bank, he’s looking for a match, the fisherman was cold

structural ambiguity

comes from the way words are grouped or attached in the syntax

multiple possible structures/trees for the same string of words

Ex: old men and women, visiting relatives can be annoying, i saw a man with a telescope

phrase

syntactic unit with internal structurese

sentence

a string of words that is grammatical in language

subject

the expression that comes before a verbo

object

the expression that comes after a verb

phrase structure grammars

hierarchical grammars that utilize syntactic categories

details the syntactic rules of a language

explains how phrase structures are built

explicitly and specifically describes the mental syntactic knowledge of the language’s speakers

X —> YZ

X is composed of the elements YZ

S

sentence

NP

noun phrase

VP

verb phrase

all sentences consist of

NP VP

proper noun

Ann, Tufts, France

pronoun

he, she, they

mass noun

water, sand, furniture

can be preceded by some but not a or number words

do not take plural suffix

usually things that can’t be easily counted, often substances

nouns must be preceded by

a determiner

count noun

waterbottle, chair, etc

can be preceded by a and number words

take the plural suffix when plural

usually things that can be counted

PP

prepositional phrase

ITV

intransitive verb

sleep, dream, look

TV

transitive verb

see kick want

DTV

ditransitive verb

ask, wish, prescribe

SV

sentential verb

believe, think, doubt

DET

determiners

the, a, an

how to parse a sentence

• follow the rules in the grammar

• don’t use your intuition

  • each rule (and the treelets it generates) must fit together like a puzzle from start to finish

steps for parsing sentence using PSG

1. label the POS of each word in the sentence

2. Place S —> NP VP at top of your tree

3. everything before the verb will be in the NP, the verb and everything to the right will be in the VP

   1. build the np

   2. build the vp

      1. determine verb subcategorization frame and set the POS of the verb

determining POS of the verb

set verb POS based on the arguments in the sentence:

0 = ITV

1 NP = TV

2 NP = DTV

S = SV

some verbs can behave in more than one way - use the POS relevant to the sentence you’re analyzing

issues with PSGs as a theory of syntactic grammar

while they have the right syntactic properties, they are not well-integrated with cognition

cognition-based method

words are small pieces of syntactic structure

start with words and work up to structure

lexical items are selected based on how well they fit the meaning to be expressed

lexical items project syntactic structure (basic trees) - syntactic structure is stored and retrieved for each word

to build the sentence, merge the treelets appropriately

pros of cognition-based method

simplicity in mechanism: project and merge

more explicit means for lexical items to influence syntactic structure

X-bar theory

every phrase in every sentence in every language is organized the same way

sign language syntax

grammatical use of space

pronouns have fixed positions

spatial agreement

use of abstract space to indicate semantic roles

a directional verb’s starting and ending location agrees with the location of the agent and patient

spatial verb agreement

relatively free word order

how we know who the subject is and who the object is

available in a subset of signs “directional verbs”

1. establish location of referents

2. use locations in signs to refer to referents

ex: the boy saw the dog bite the cat —> see sign starts at location of boy and ends at location of dog, bite sign starts at location of dog and ends at location of cat

semantics

meaning expressed by linguistic utterances

focuses on literal meaning of words and phrases

heavily dependent on lexical meaning and syntax

lexical semantics

focuses on words

lexicalization, semantic relations among words, sense and reference

compositional semantics

focuses on how words combine

what does it mean for a concept to be lexicalized in a language

if a language has a word for the concept

synonyms

words that have the same meaning

antonyms

words that have opposite meanings

types of antonyms

complementary, gradable, reverses, converses

complementary antonyms

referents must be either picked out by one expression or the other (not both)

ex: married/single, visible/invisible

gradable antonyms

represent points on a continuum (something may be neither one nor the other)

ex: warm/cold, small/big

reverses

one undoes the other

ex: expand/contract, ascend/descend

converses

for one to occur, the other must occur as well

ex: lend/borrow, employer/employee

hypernym

a word whose meaning includes the meaning of a subordinate concept

ex: furniture is a hypernym of chair

hyponym

a word whose meaning is included or is a subset of the meaning of another concept

ex: chair is hyponym of furniture

meronym

a word that is a part of another word

ex: mast is a meronym of sailboat

holonym

a word that contains another word

ex: sailboat is a holonym of mast

polysemy

word that has several related meanings

paper = article and material for writing

chicken = domesticated bird and meat and coward

homophony

word that has several unrelated meanings

ex: light = not heavy and form of illumination

reference/denotation

the things in the world that words refer to

referent

a specific thing a word refers to

proper nouns - single referent

common nouns - many referents

things that do not exist - no referent

ex for referent

different words/linguistic expressions can refer to the same thing (they have the same reference)

ex: Lin Manuel Miranda is:

• writer of Hamilton

• star of Hamilton

• winner of Pulitzer prize

• husband

• daddy

sense/connotation

mental representation of a linguistic expression’s meaning

definition, associations, experiences

ex: book

• reference: set of all objects containing bound pages

• sense: object collected in libraries, education, knowledge, etc

the same referent can be associated with diff senses

an expression can have a sense without any referent

thematic roles

the semantics of verbs

describe the roles that entities play in an action or relation

agent

the individual which performs an action; the doer of the action

patient

something which is acted upon as part of an action

theme

something which moves, literally or metaphorically, as a part of an action

source

the location/individual from which a movement occurs

goal

the location/individual to which movement occurs

location

the location at which something happens

experiencer

someone who experiences something

instrument

something an agent uses to make something happen

cause

something that causes something to happen

stimulus

something that causes an experience

talmy

primitive conceptual categories

manner

describes specific motion encoded by a verb

path

describes a physical or abstract trajectory

verbs encode manner or path info

manner: jump, hop, skip

path: enter, exit, ascend, descend

typology

languages tend to lexicalize either path or manner in verbs

manner of motion: english, greek, slavic languages

path: romance languages, turkish, hungarian

when a language lexicalizes one kind of info, that info is carried by the verb and the other kind of info is expressed by other means

english as a manner language

the manner of the motion is usually encoded in the meaning of the verb

path information is usually encoded in syntactic structures

ex: He [to walk/hop]_manner [down/across/away ... X to Y]_path

French as a path language

path info usually encoded in the meaning of verb, manner is encoded in syntactic structures

• [monter/descendre/traverser/partir/revenir/entre/sortir]_path [en marchant, à pied, en courant...]_manner

  • English equivalent: [to ascend, descend, cross, leave, return, enter, exit]_path [by walking, on foot, by running...]_manner

principle of compositionality

the meaning of a linguistic expression is a systematic function of the meanings of its parts and their syntactic organization

non-compositionality

the meaning of some expressions is not compositional - the overall meaning is not a systematic meaning of its parts

ex: its raining cats and dogs

speakers have to memorize the holistic meaning rather than deriving it from its parts

sets

an orderless collection of entities, well-defined theoretical concepts

the reference of individual words = set of entities

set for proper nouns

reference of proper nouns is a set containing a single individual

set for common nouns

nouns refer to the set of all entities that have a particular property

ex: ice is the set of all things that are water and solid

set for verbs

refer to the set of all events in the world that have a particular property

Ex: to freeze: the set of occurrences where a liquid becomes a solid

NP VP - asserting

ordinary declarative sentences assert a proposition (truth values and conditions)

assert the set of referents of the NP is included int he set of referents of the VP

ex: Pedro Pascal acts asserts that Pedro Pascal is in the set of entities that act

propositions have

truth values and truth conditions

truth values

is the fact that is being asserted true

truth conditions

the conditions that must hold in the world for the proposition to be true

ADJ NP - specifying

adjectives specify some subset of the entities referred to by the NP

depends on type of adjective

ADJ NP - intersection

some adjectives specify a subset of the NP by intersecting 2 sets

the ADJ specifies a set of entities

the NP specifies a set of entities

ADJ NP = set of entities in both

Ex: NP = felon; NP = married; ADJ NP = married felon

independently specify a set of referents

ADJ NP - relative intersection, subsective intersection

some adjectives specify a subset of the NP by subsetting the NP’s entities

ex: skillful, big/small, exciting, beautiful

these adjectives do not independently pick out a set of referents; reference is not fixed but determined by the reference of the NP

oxymorons can come from treating a subsective adjective as if it were intersective

ADJ NP - non intersection

expression refers to individuals who may or may not be in the set referred to by the NP

ex: possible, alleged, likely, supposed

requires modal logic

ADJ NP - anti-intersection

expression refers to individuals that are not described by the NP

ex: fake, pretend, artificial, imaginary

ADJ entails entity is not in the set of items picked out by the NP

pragmatics

study of how we use language in context and how context contributes to meaning

context dependent

what a sentence means and what a sentence does depends on the context

deictic terms

linguistic expressions that by themselves don’t mean anything specific - their meaning is entirely dependent on the context in which they appear

ex: pronouns, temporal terms, directional terms

types of context

linguistic, extra-linguistic, situational, social

linguistic context

what has been said earlier in conversation

extralinguistic context

context outside of language

situational context

the local environment of the utterance