midterm - linguistics

how to decide what is a language, a dialect?

1. mutual intelligibitlity

   1. do speakers of different language understand each other?

      different measures:

      reading texts tests (RTT)

      - Swalesh lists (compare words of a texts and see how similar they are

2. sociopolitical factor

   1. ex. Bosnian = croatian = ser bian

   2. (war due to the people saying they don't speak the same language)

largest language familiy

niger-congo

Country with the most languages

papua new guinea

Instutitionalised

Not a lot of languages are Instutitionalised: taught in schools, dictionnary

Most frequent word orders

SOV and SVO (_75__% of world languages)

morphemes

the smallest unit carrying meaning (not syllables)

Root and affixes

root

core of the word with the basic meaning, bound: “-ceive”, free: “green”

Affixes

bound morphemes, can only be seen with another morpheme. Prefixes, suffixes, infixes (inside), circumfixes (geliebt) 

Derivational morphemes

changes the meaning “unhappy” or part of speech (word class) or both

Inflectional morphemes

grammatical: 

-s 3rd person singular present

-ed past tense

-ing progressive

-en past participle

-s plural

-’s possessive 

-er comparative

-est superlative

Tree diagram Transformations examples

• Declarative statement and question 

  • (The students were studying/Were the students studying?)

• Active-passive

  • (The student read the book/The book was read by the student)

• ‘There’ sentences

  • (A cat was on the mat/There was a cat on the mat)

• PP preposing

  • (She wrote a letter with the pen/With the pen, she wrote her letter)

Subcategorization

ex. verbs transitive, intransitive, ditransitive

transitive, intransitive, ditransitive

• Transitive: is followed by an object 

• Intransitive: cannot be followed by an NP or an object

• Ditransitive: 2 object complements (to give smth to someone, V; give, ___ NP, PP), Deutsch: V: Geben, ___ dativ, akkusativ

Adjunct vs complements

Complements: changes the meaning of the verb (paul lives in london)

Adjunct: doesn’t  (paul met sally in london)

THE CORE: PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS

Principles: UG (universal grammar)

Parameters: specific to the language (i.e. SVO order)

Thematic roles

Agent, theme, location, goal, source, instrument, experiencer, causative, possessor

Agent

The one who performs an action.

ex. Joyce ran

Theme

the one or thing that undergoes an action

ex. mary called Bill/

Location

The place where an actoin occurs.

ex. it rains in Spain. 

Goal

the place to which an action is directed

ex. put the cat on the porch

source

the place from which an action originates

ex. he flew from Winnipeg to Regina

instrument

the means by which an action is performed

ex. Jo cuts hair with a razor

experiencer

one who perceives smth

ex. helen heard Robert play piano

causative

a natural force that causes a change

ex. the wind damages the roof

possessor

one who has smth

ex. the tail of the dog got caught in the door.

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS

man: [+human, + male, -female, +adult]

Deixis

“In all languages, there are many words and expressions whose reference relies entirely on the situational context of the utterance and can be understood only in light of these circumstances.”

Person deixis: this person

Time deixis: now, then, tomorrow

Place  deixis: here, there, this place, on the right, behind

Semantic vs pragmatics

Semantic: literal meaning

Pragmatics: contextual meaning

Maxims of conversation

Quantity, relevance, manner, quality

Quantity

the discourse should be as informative as is required. No oversharing or saying too much.

Relevance

be relevant.

Manner

be brief and orderly; avoid ambiguity and obscurity.

Quality

no lie; no unsupported claims; sincere and truthful.

explain what “MI” stands for

Mutual information score

briefly explain what this score is

It is a statistical quantification of the strength of the relationship between two words that frequently co-occur (collocates) 

explain how it should be interpreted; 

the higher the score is, the stronger the relationship between the words (but see question (e) below regarding the unreliability of some MI scores).  

explain why it is important to consider this score when investigating collocates

Some words might co-occur very often, but they aren’t very strongly associated. For instance, the determiner “the” is a very frequent word and co-occurs with almost every noun in English. Even if it co-occurs hundreds of times with “cat” and “dog” in COCA, the relationship is not a strong one, because “the” also co-occurs hundreds of times with hundreds of other nouns.  

explain when an “MI” score cannot be relied on

 MI scores are unreliable when the collocate is very infrequent (i.e. less than 8-10 instances). 

whether this needs to be taken into account in exercises 2 and 3.  

No, all of the collocates in exercises 2 and 3 occur hundreds of times with each target word (i.e. dog, cat, perpetual, eternal).

Articulatory Phonetics

how sound is produced

Acoustic Phonetics

how sound sounds

Auditory Phonetics

how sound is perceived

Articulatory: 3 main components

1) the sub-glottal system

2) the larynx (vocal folds + glottis)

3) the vocal tract above the larynx

Acoustic findings 3

1. Acoustic uniqueness, 2. Lack of invariance, 3. Non-segmentation of the speech signal

Auditory: 3 main parts:

OUTER: captures and amplifies speech sounds

MIDDLE: Transforms acoustic signal into mechanical energy

INNER: Transforms mechanical energy into neuroelectric signals to be processed by the brain

ARTICULATORY DESCRIPTIONS OF ENGLISH CONSONANTS

voicing + place + manner

ex. voiced bilabial stop

voicing options

voiced, voiceless

place options

bilabial, labiodental, interdental, alveoar, palatal, velar, glottal

b, f, θ, t, č / ʧ, k, h

bliapvg

manner

stop, nasal (stop), fricative, affricate, glide, liquid

t, n, s, č / ʧ, w, l

snfagl

vowel description

y, x, roundness, tensness

y

high, mid, low

x

front, central, back

rounded vowels

u, U(ʊ), o, ɔ

mid/ high back vowels