Linguistics Final

What is linguistics? What can we learn from linguistics?

linguistics is the scientific study of human language

can learn phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, historical and computational linguistics

What is the difference between prescriptive and descriptive approaches to grammar?

descriptive grammar are linguistic rules compiled from observations of the way language is actually used by speakers

descriptive rules do not limit what is grammatical

prescriptive grammar are rules about how language should work according to people

prescriptive rules often do not reflect how people actually use language in their daily lives

What are the design features of human language?

mode of communication: means by which messages are sent (speaking or signing)

meaning: what we want to communicate

pragmatic function: what we want to do with language (goal in mind/ scolding, thinking, etc.)

interchangeability: users can both transmit and receive messages

cultural transmission: details learned through experience

discreteness: utterances are built up of discrete units that combine to form longer units

displacement: language can be used to talk about things that are not present in space and/or time

productivity: rules of language allows us to create and understand an infinte set of utterances that are brand new

What does it mean that language is innate in humans?

innate- we are born with the ability to acquire language and eventually be able to produce it as well

How does animal communication differ from human language?

animal communication can have most of the design features, but they do not have displacement and productivity

these two design features make it different from human language

What distinguishes the major areas of linguistic analysis?

phonetics is sounds and sound structures

morphology is words

syntax is sentences

socio/variation is dialects

What is the difference between tone and intonation?

intonation: pitch changes across phrases or sentences that signal meaning (I never said she stole my money)

tone: the pitch (or sequence of pitches) at which a single word is produced; signals a literal distinction in word meaning (we do not have tone in English, but some languages use tone to distinguish word meaning)

What are the core issues that phonologist’s study?

1.) How can sounds be sequenced? (phonotactics)

2.) What are the sounds in a language that are meaningfully distinctive? (phonemes)

3.) How do these sounds change as a function of their local context? (phonological rules)_

What is a minimal pair? How does this relate to phonemes?

a minimal pair is a pair of words with distinct meanings that differ only by one sound

the sound that differs across minimal pairs of words are separate phonemes

if a minimal pair is present, then it is contrastive distribution and separate phonemes

What is complementary distribution? What is the justification?

complementary distribution is when sounds are allophones of the same phoneme

this occurs when no minimal pairs are present

environment charts, generalizations, and formal rules

What is contrastive distribution? What is the justification?

contrastive distribution is when sounds are separate phonemes

minimal pairs are present

How do you know whether sounds are allophones of the same phoneme or different phonemes?

if a minimal pair is present, then sounds are different phonemes

if there is no minimal pair, then sounds are allophones of the same phoneme and a rule must be written

Characterize phonemes, phones, and the environments in which allophones occur in terms of natural classes

phone is a sound

phoneme is a sound category

allophones is the rules

What is the formal notation of a phonological rule?

steps for phonological analysis:

1. look for a minimal pair

2. if there are none, create a list of environments for each sound

3. describe the distribution of the sounds, being as general as possible

4. select the underlying phoneme and the surface form, and write a formal rule that predicts the appearance of one of the sounds

/never/ —> [always] / environment

What are the universal phonological processes?

types of phonological processes that recur cross-linguistically

What is the difference between free and bound morphemes?

free morpheme: words that can stand on their own

bound morpheme: meaningful units that cannot stand on their own (prefix/suffix)

What is the difference between content and function morphemes?

content morphemes carry the core meaning of a word

these include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs

function morphemes serve grammatical function

these include prepositions, determiners, auxiliary verbs (will/should), and some affixes

What are the different affix types?

inflectional and derivational

What tests should you apply to identify inflectional vs. derivational affixes?

Test 1: Does the addition of the affix change the lexical category of the word? (inflectional affixes NEVER do, derivational affixes sometimes do)

Test 2: Is the affix productive? Can it attach to most of the members of that lexical category? (inflectional affixes are extremely productive, derivational affixes are not as productive)

Test 3: When you add the affix is the change clear and predictable? (inflectional are predictable, derivational are not always predictable)

inflectional affixes always attach last!

What are the morphological and syntactic tests that identify the lexical category of words?

nouns

• morphological: can be pluralized, can have affixes like -tion and -er

• syntactic: can come after a determiner, can be negated

determiner

• come before nouns, can only have one in a row

adjective

• morphological: can be used in comparative or superlative forms, can have adjectival affixes (-ish and-able)

• syntactic: come before nouns, can have more than one in a row, follow versions of “is”, can follow “very”

verb

• morphological: can be put in past tense or progressive tense, can have verb affixes

• syntactic: can follow auxiliaries, can be negated with “not”, can be made into a command

preposition

• syntactic: often come before a Det + Noun sequence, can come after the word “right”

What tests determine constituency?

Replacement/Substitution: synthetic categories can always be replaced with other phrases from the same category

Movement: words that form a constituent can be moved together to the beginning of a sentence

Clefting: It was …. that …

Question + Answer: if you can form a grammatical answer to a question with a string of words, the answer is a constituent

What tests determine the syntactic category of strings of words?

use PSR rules

What properties of language arise from recursion of PSRs?

you can have an endless sentence

productivity

What is the relationship between nodes in a syntactic tree?

node: every label in a tree

mother nodes: come directly above another node

daughter nodes: come directly below another node

sister nodes: nodes at the same level in a tree

What are direct speech vs. indirect speech acts?

a direct speech act is when the function of the utterance matches the type of sentence it is in (Do you like cookies?)

an indirect speech act is when the form of the sentence does not match the speech act (I wonder whether you like cookies.)

What is the Cooperative Principle?

Paul Grice 1967

“Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk- exchange in which you are engaged”

What are Grice’s Conversational Maxims?

Quantity: don’t provide too much or too little information

1. make your contribution as informative as is required

2. provide neither too much nor too little information

Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true

1. do not say which you believe to be false

2. do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

Relevance: be relevant. say things that contribute materially to the conversation at hand. avoid random topic shifts

What is the difference between synchronic and diachronic variation in language?

synchronic is in the same time

diachronic is over different time (language evolution from the 60s)

What are ways to introduce new words into a language?

coinage: made up words

acronyms: first letter of words in a phrase

eponym: words connected to a name

blends: combination of 2 words

clipping: clip off part of a word

conversion: shift lexical category

borrowing: words from other languages

What is Gresham’s Law? How does it relate to euphemisms?

in economics- bad money drives out good money

in language: bad meanings (negative connotations) drive out good

euphemisms: words that replace taboo words to help speakers avoid talking about “unpleasant” subjects

What is the relationship between language and identity?

language is a key tool to express and construct identity

influences how a person sees themselves and relates to others

What are sociocultural variables that affect language use?

age

prestige

formality

location

socioeconomic status

culture/ethnicity

gender

What are some pressures that result in language endangerment?

war

political oppression

genocide

natural disasters

loss of community

language policy

social/economic pressures

language shift

What are some motivations and methods for language documentation?

word lists

audio/video recording

grammars

dictionaries

annotation

interviews

archives

books

Why do people choose to construct their own language? How do constructed languages related to natural languages?

political (esperanto) area of the world where there are a lot of languages and they wanted to create a shared language

creative and artistic (making it for a book or movie)

theoretical- people want to push the boundaries of language to determine how it works

relates to natural language because they use phonetics, phonology, and want to have rules

What are some goals and applications of computational linguistics?

computational: analyzing language, making language models, a computer doesn’t know what language (gets computers to understand language as best as we can)

understand a large body of text

make observations on how language work (using computers and lots of speech data)

using speech recognition and language processing (having your phone understand you when you talk to it)

What is the basic timeline of language development from birth to three years of age?

Sounds (birth to 12 months)

• birth: distinguish speech sounds from non-speech sounds

• 6-12 months: figure out important sounds in language (phoneme) and throw away distinctions that aren’t important (allophone)

• 6-12 months: practice producing sounds (babbling)

Words (6 to 24 months)

• 6 months: understand first words

• 12 months: produce first word

• 12-24 months: one-word stage; learning 9 new words/month (mostly nouns)

• 24 months: Word spurt! two-word stage; 9 new words/day (nouns, verbs, adj, etc.)

Syntax (24 months to ??)

• 24-36 months: two-word stage

• 36 months: three-word (+) stage

• syntax and morphology continue to become more complex as children age

What are the critical periods for acquisition of linguistic knowledge?

a biological determined period during which language acquisition must occur, if at all

phonology: 5 years

syntax: puberty

evidence for a critical period comes from:

• age of acquisition effects

• pidgins & creoles

pidgins: shared words to communicate at ports

creoles: fully developed languages that come from mixing different languages

What are typical characteristics of the form and meaning of words in child language?

use a subset of sounds from the language

simple syllable structures (CV)

mostly nouns

What evidence supports the claim that some aspects of language are innate?

children’s acquisition of language

Chompski vs. Skinner

• Showed that children do not directly learn from parents because children make mistakes with language that adults would never make