Linguistics 1 Ucla Final Study Guide

Phonology

sound patterns

Lexicon

Mental Dictionary

Morphology

structure of complex words connection between words and meaning - arbitrary

- allows us to:

- understand new words

- judge possible vs. impossible words

- recognize ambiguous words

- create new words

Syntax

Building phrases and sentences

Semantics

Meaning of language

Grammar

rules governing a language

What is performance affected by?

- memory limitation

- shifts in attention and interest

- psychological and physical states

- linguistics and non-linguistic context

Spoonerism

speech or performance error in which sounds or words are transposed

Garden Path Sentences

grammatically correct but easily misunderstood

prescriptive grammar

how we should speak

Descriptive grammar

Rules people actually follow

Universal Grammar

Laws of grammar that all languages follow

Universal Rules

- nouns/verbs

- way in which to indicate whether an event is completed or not

- ways to mark negation, ask a question, indicate more than one

- have rules and finite number of symbols that combine and permits to form larger units

- discrete combinational systems

- recursive rules: rules that add to or embed one sentence inside another

Recursive Rules: Coordination

"and", connects independent clauses

Recursive Rules: Subordination

"that", connects dependent clauses

Types of Morphology

compounding - combine 2 or more free morphemes

Affixation - adding prefixes and/or suffixes

Reduplication

etc

Word Trees

used to describe compound words

Grammatical properties of Head

Determines lexical category (English is right most word)

- syntactic category

- meaning

- inflectional ending - added to head

Prepositions and Pronouns

closed class - don't admit new membz

Nouns/Verbs/Adjs/Advs

Open class - can be added to

Properties of English Compounds

- head comes last

- stress comes first

- stress determines when words is compound, not orthography

Productivity

degree to which we use a morphological process

Affixation

Build new words by adding prefixes and suffixes

Derivational Affix

Modify the meaning and often the syntactic category of the host

EX: happy/unhappy

Inflectional affix

Affect the grammatical function of the root, not meaning

EX: dance/dances

Circumfixes

surround the root both initially and finally (not found in english)

Infixes

expletive infixation

EX: fan-****ing-tastic

Rule:

An expletive may be inserted only before a stressed syllable

Tree Structure Hypothesis

Hierarchical internal structure

- contain sub-trees that are constituents

Constituent

- corresponds to a node

- all and only the words under the node must be included

- behaves like a single unit

Constituency tests

- stand alone

- can be displaced within sentence

- Can be substituted by a pronoun

Determiners

a, the, that, this, your, my....

Auxiliaries

will, can, must, be, have....

Complementizers

that, for, if, whether.....

transitive verbs

require a direct object NP

EX: catch, hit, push, visit, etc

Intransitive Verbs

Do not take an object

EX: go, sleep, etc

Can take a PP

Semantic Meaning

literal meaning of a sentence

Pragmatic Meaning

the message the speaker intends to convey with his utterance, which may be different

- context dependent

Word meaning

Lexical semantics

Synonymy

Same set of semantic features

EX: Automobile/car, Purchase/buy

Antonymy

different by one feature value

EX: aunt/uncle, hot/cold

Polysomy

Same-sounding words with same or related meanings

EX: face(of a person, of a building)

Homonymy

Same pronunciation but different features

EX: tail/tale, bat/bat

Semantic Priming

A response to a target word is faster when it is preceded by a semantically related prime compared to an unrelated one

Sentence Meaning

- Principle of Compositionality

- Truth conditions

- the meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its words and its syntactic structure

Structural Ambiguity: Instrumental

V' -> V' PP

V' -> V NP

Structural Ambiguity: Possession

N' -> N PP

Truth conditions

Knowing the meaning of a sentence involved knowing the conditions

Entailment

S1 entails S2 if whenever S1 is true, S2 is also true

Synonymy

They are always true in the same set of circumstances

Contradictory

S1 and S2 are contradictory if S1 and S2 can never be true in the same situation

Presuppositions

S1 presupposes S2 if and only if S1 entails S2 and "not S1" entails S2

- stay around even when the sentence is negated or questioned

Implicatures

Inferences that may be drawn from an utterance in context which are neither expressed directly nor strictly implied

Phonetics

The study and classification

Phoneme

Any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language

Flap

Butter is pronounced like "budder"

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

- Created in the late 19th century - revised since then

- provides a system for representing sounds in an unambiguous way

- can be used by linguists and other people who need to have a precise system for representing sounds in different languages/dialects

Dipthongs

A sequence of two vowel sounds "squashed" together

EX: as in coin, loud and side

Features that determine Consonants

- Place of Articulation

- Manner of Articulation

- Voicing

Bilabials

Sounds produced by bringing both lips together

EX: [b], [p], [m]

Labiodentals

Sounds that produced by touching the bottom lip to the upper teeth

EX: [f], [v]

Interdentals

Sounds are produced by inserting the tip of the tongue between the upper teeth and lower teeth

EX: [θ], [đ]

Alveolars

Sounds produced by raising the tip of the tongue to the alveolar ridge (part of the hard palate directly behind the upper front teeth)

EX: [t], [d], [n], [s], [z], [l], [r]

Palatals

Sounds produced by raising the front part of the tongue to the hard palate (bony section of the roof of the mouth behind the alveolar ridge)

EX: [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [dʒ], [j]

Velars

Sounds produced by raising the back of the tongue to the soft palate or velum

EX: [k], [g], [ŋ]

Uvulars

Sounds are produced by raising the back of the tongue to the uvula

EX: [R], [q], [G]

Glottals

[h] produced with the flow of air through the open glottis

[?] produced if the air is stopped completely at the glottis by tightly closed vocal chords: glottal stop

Labio-velar

Bilabial and Velar

Voiceless

vocal cords apart, air flows freely through glottis

voiced

vocal cords together, airstream forces way through, causing vibration

stops

there is a complete obstruction of airflow somewhere in the vocal tract

EX: p, b, m, t, d, n, k, g, ŋ, tʃ, dʒ, Ɂ

Fricatives

There is a major, but not complete, obstruction in the vocal tract

Affricates

Briefly stopping the airflow completely, then slightly releasing the closure so that a fricative-like noise is produced

Liquids

Some minor obstruction of the vocal tract with tongue, but air still passes through

Sibilant

A fricative consonant sound, in which the tip, or blade, of the tongue is brought near the roof of the mouth and air is pushed past the tongue to make a hissing sound

Glides

A sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but function as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable

Tense Vowels

Decided by tongue position

may occur at the end of words

EX: i, e, u, o, ɔ, a, aI, ɑʊ, ɔɪ

Lax Vowels

Decided by tongue Position

Do not ordinarily occur at the ends of words (not possible in English)

EX: [ɪ] [ɛ] [æ] [ʌ] [ә] [ʊ]

The plural morpheme

- as [s] after a voiceless C (non-sibilant)

- as [z] after a voiced C (non-sibilant)

- as [əz] after a sibilant

List of Sounds Hypothesis

The plural morpheme is pronounce as [s] after [t, p, k, θ, f]

Feature Hypothesis

The plural morpheme is pronounced as [s] after a [-voice, -sibilant]

Ease of Articulation

Tendency to prolong an articulatory gesture

EX: voicing, nasalization assimilation)

Ease of Perception

Tendency to avoid the creation go identical or nonidentical c's in the sequence

EX: buffer vowel

Natural Classes

Voiced, voiceless, sibilant, etc

Minimal Pairs

Two words with different meanings that are identical except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in each word

EX: cab/cad

Allomorphs

- morphemes that occur in the same phonological environment

- can be found using minimal pairs

Rules of Phonology (Children)

- Based on properties of segments rather than on individual words

- Makes it possible for young children to learn their native language

Children

- Don't need to learn each plural, each past tense, each possessive form, and each verb ending, on a noun-by-noun or verb-by-ber basis

- Once the rule is learned, thousands of word forms are automatically known

Allophone

One of two or more variants of the same phoneme. The aspirated /p/ of pin and the unaspirated /p/ of spin are allophones of the phoneme /p/

Complementary Distribution

- When two Allophones of one phoneme always occur in different environments and never occur in the sam environment.

- often occurs because dements are affected by the phonetic environment of surrounding sounds

- must be phonetically similar and be predictable based on environment

- non-distinctive features

Contrastive Distribution

- When two sounds are able to form minimal pairs

- They cannot be predicted

- Interchanging allophones from the two phonemes triggers a change in meaning

- distinctive features

The Regularity Hypothesis

- Sound changes is ordered and systematic.

- Languages do not change in random ways

The Relatedness Hypothesis

When differences amount two or more languages are systematic and regular the languages are related - descended from a common source

Cognates

Related words in languages descended from a common source

The Great Vowel Shift

- Between 1400-1600

- resulted in new phonemic representations of words and morphemes

Linguistic Capacity of Children

Children extract the rules from the language they hear around them

- Reinventing the grammar of mature speakers

Innateness Hypothesis

Receives its strongest support from the observation that the grammars people ultimately end up with contain many abstract rules and structures that are not directly represented in the linguistic input they receive

Acquisition of Phonology

- First words are generally monosyllabic with a Consonant-Vowel form

- acquisition of class sounds begins with vowels and then goes by manner of articulation for consonants

- nasals are acquired first

- then Glides, Stops, Liquids, Fricatives and Affricates

Critical Period Hypothesis

There is a limited developmental time period during which it is possible to acquire a language to native-like levels.

First Year of Language Acquisition

Devoted to figuring out the sounds of the target language

Second Year of Language Acquisition

- Learning how these sounds are used in the phonology of the language

- especially which contrasts are phonemic

- Can receive or comprehend many more phonological contrasts than they can produce

Overextension

Children will use the word papa or daddy for every male not just actual father