LING 2005
Linguistics: The scientific study of language(s).
Descriptive statements about language describe how language is used, reporting observations objectively, without any judgments about them.
“This is what people say and write.”
Prescriptive statements about language make judgments about language correctness.
“This is what people should say and write. This is good and that is bad.”
Grammar: description of the structure of (a) language(s).
Lexicon: The set of words in a language and our knowledge about these words.
Phonetics: the science dealing with the physical and physiological character of sounds, how sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived.
Phonology: the science dealing with the sound system of (a) specific language(s).
Phoneme: the smallest building block that can change the meaning of a word.
Morphology: the science dealing with the structure of words, how words consist of smaller parts – morphemes – each one contributing some specific meaning.
Morpheme: the smallest building blocks that carry meaning.
Syntax: the science dealing with how words are put together into larger chunks: phrases, clauses, sentences, and texts.
Morphosyntax: Morphology + Syntax; it’s often difficult to tell exactly where to draw the borderline between them, and therefore it may be more convenient to treat them together.
Semantics: the science dealing with the meaning of words and utterances.
Pragmatics: the science dealing with the use of words and utterances in a social context, i.e. IRL situations. (We often don’t say exactly what we mean, e.g., Do you know what time it is?)
Linguistic Competence: innate knowledge speakers obtain from their knowledge
Metalinguistic Awareness: awareness of your language’s structure grammar
Universality: what all languages have in common
Inaccessibility: the ability to judge whether something is grammatical but not understand why
Lecture 2 - Morphology Key Terms:
Word classes (aka parts of speech): used to denote categories of words, eg: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs
Verbs: describes an action
Noun: things we can touch, see manipulate
Adverbs: adds to the verb, describes a verb
Determiner: specifies the noun you’re referring to (my, that, a, this)
Preposition: describes a location pr a position
Open Class Words: change more, new words are created, free for creativity (eg nouns, verbs, adjectives)
Closed Class Words: new words rarely enter this class, can’t stand alone (eg:pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc)
Verb: central part of a clause, describes an actions
Gender: In many languages, nouns are accompanied by a marker that indicates masculine, feminine, neutral, etc. For example, German has three genders since nouns require either der, die, or das
Root: the core of a word, carries the meaning.
Affix: a small bound morpheme that is not in a word class category
Base form (aka stem): a basic form of a word that an affix is added to.
Infinitive: a form of the verb that is typically used together with another verb in many languages, e.g.I can read
Not all languages have an infinitive, and use expressions like ‘I can that I read’, instead.
Derivation: modification of a word’s function or meaning (eg V → N)
Inflection: the modification of a word’s form to indicate grammatical information (eg gender, tense, plural, etc)
Free morpheme: a word that can stand alone
Bound morpheme: a morpheme that must be attached to a root or base
Allomorph: variants of a morpheme (in pronunciation)
Lecture 3: Morphological Processes Verbs
Tense: grammatical category (past, present, future) that provides information about the time of an event’s occurrence.
Aspect: the properties of an event or situation denoted by the verb phrase (context)
Aspectual verbs: verbs that help indicate that an action is ongoing or complete such as, continue to dance;stop driving
Infixes: affixes that occur within another morpheme or root
Circumfixes: affixes that simultaneously occur on either side of another morpheme or root
Reduplication: all or part of the base is doubled (part = partial reduplication)
Suppletion: a morpheme is replaced by an entirely different morpheme
Perfective: a point or unit of time expressing a completed action (something has happened and is done)
Imperfective: an action not completed, repeated, or ongoing (flow of time)
Lecture 4: Morphological Processes Nouns
Noun: we can see, touch , manipulate, etc. (more concrete)
might be inflected for singular/plural, definite/indefinite…
might belong to a gender class or some other kind of noun class
generally used as subject or object or adverbial complement
Generally denotes living beings, objects, and abstract ideas
might be preceded by a determiner
Types of Nouns: concrete, abstract, common, proper, countable, uncountable, mass
Determiner:
tends to appear next to a noun
might be inflected so that it agrees with the noun (meaning that it has the same gender, number, definiteness)
tends to express definiteness, possession, uniqueness, quantity…
Content Morpheme: type of morpheme, for example noun, adjective, bound root, etc, give specific meaning
Function Morphemes: for grammar, for example determiners, inflectional affixes, pronouns
Definite: something known (quantity, specificity)
Indefinite: something new or unknown
Form: Does the word inflect? What different forms does it have?
Function: How is it used? What is its sentence function? What is its position?
Meaning: What kind of meaning does it convey?
Number: a countable amount: singular (1), plural (1+), dual (2)
Conversion (zero derivation): changes an existing word to a different syntactic category with no change in its form. (n → V but same word)
Derivation: changes an existing word to a different syntactic category with a change in its form. (eg: affixation)
Lecture 5: Morphophonology
Grammar: description of the structure of (a) language(s).
Phonetics: the science dealing with the physical and physiological character of sounds, how sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived.
Phonology: the science dealing with the sound system of (a) specific language(s).
Phoneme: the smallest building block that can change the meaning of a word.
Morphology: the science dealing with the structure of words, how words consist of smaller parts – morphemes – each one contributing some specific meaning.
Morpheme: the smallest building blocks that carry a meaning.
Allophones: two (or more) sounds that differ slightly, but are used in a specific language as if they were the same sound, with no change in meaning.
Lecture 6: PhonoProcesses
Phonological processes: phonological principles that do not apply generally, but only in specific morphological contexts.
For example, when derivation or inflection creates an environment that violates a language’s phonotactic constraints. This violation triggers a “repair strategy”.
Phonotactics: the possible combination of sounds in a specific language
Vowel Harmony: vowels within a domain adjust to share one or more phonological feature such as height.
Epenthesis: the insertion of a segment between two other segments that would otherwise be violating a phonotactic constraint.
Elision: the omission of sounds, syllables, or words.
Often occurs in fast speech, this occurs in morphophonology to repair a violation of a phonotactic constraint.
Metathesis: the transposition or exchange of sounds or syllables in a word.
Often occurs as a ‘slip of the tongue’, this occurs in morphophonology to repair a violation of a phonotactic constraint.
Lecture 7: Morphophonology
Alternation: the process involved when part of an affix (or word) is pronounced or spelled differently because of the surrounding elements. a.k.a.: allomorphy.
Allomorph: a phonetic variant form of a morpheme.
Sometimes morphemes change their sound or their spelling but not their meaning. Each of these different forms is classed as an allomorph.
Assimilation: a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds.
A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur either within a word or between words.
Dissimilation: In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar.
In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r/ and /l/ when they occur in a sequence
Lecture 8: Syntax pt 1
In order of universality (generally)
Predicate: a verb phrase
Verb (V): action/stative word
Noun (N): person, place, thing
Adjective (Adj): describes a noun
Adverb (Adv): describes the predicate (when, frequency, or how the action takes place)
Determiner (Det): specifies the noun
Preposition (P): specifies a location
Auxiliary verb (Aux): ‘specifies’ the verb
modal verbs: will, would, can, could, may, might, must, should
non-modal verbs: be, have, do
Conjunction (Conj): combines phrases and clauses
Degree word: describes a measure of Adj or P
very, too, quite, almost
Quantifier: describes the quantity of N
no(ne), some, all, most, many, a few •
Complementizer: connects complement clauses into matrix clauses
I hope that I have enough time
Prepositions & Postpositions: A lexical category that functions as the head of a prepositional phrase (into, with, for, etc.) and occurs:
PREPOSITION: before its complement (a hat)
POSTPOSITION: after its complement (hat a)
Intransitive: Verbs that are used without an object
sleep, fall, smile, laugh, walk
Transitive: Verbs that are used with an object
Buy steal say
Lecture 9: Syntax Pt 2
Agreement: the result of one category being inflected to mark properties of another
gender: masculine, feminine, neuter, etc., categories assigned to nouns
number: a feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions of “one”, “two”, or “three or more”
possession: an asymmetrical relationship where one constituent owns/rules over another constituent (my, your, his, her, etc.)
person (deictic*): “first” = speaker/experiencer, “second” = addressee, “third” = an external referee, “inclusive” = a group including addressee, “exclusive” = a group not including addressee
spatial (deictic): descriptions of objects and their relations in a given environment
here, there, that, etc.
temporal (deictic): the various times involved in and referred to in an utterance
now, then, later, etc.
deixis: the use of certain words to specify time, place, or person whose denotation changes with context (tomorrow, there, etc.)
Case:
associative: a grammatical category that expresses "X and the group (of one or more members) associated with X", where X is a nominal, usually a person.
“Susan and her colleagues”
benefactive: one constituent receives the benefit of the situation in the clause (FOR)
“She opened the door for Tom”
genitive: an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun (‘s, of)
“Mary’s book is about the men of Rome”
locative: indicates a location “The book is on the table”
ergative: the grammatical case that identifies a nominal phrase as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative– absolutive languages.
absolutive: the case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb in addition to being used for the citation form of a noun.
nominative: generally marks the subject of a verb, the noun
“She greeted him"
accusative: the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb,
“She greeted him”
dative: the recipient or beneficiary of an action, typically a giving action (TO)
“She gave the book to him”
In English, case is marked by prepositions (to, for, of), and in other languages it is marked morphemes.
Lecture 10 - Syntax Pt 3
Phrase: a phrase consists of one or more words
[the man]
Clause: a clause consists of one or more phrases
[[the man] [laughed]]
Sentence: a sentence consists of one or more clauses
[[[the man] [laughed]][[because] [the joke] [was funny]]]
Phrase Structure: a unit of syntactic structure consisting of an obligatory head and optional specifier and/or complements
AdjP: a phrase (see above) where the obligatory head is an Adjective
AdvP: a phrase (see above) where the obligatory head is an Adverb
DP: a phrase (see above) where the obligatory head is a Determiner
NP: a phrase (see above) where the obligatory head is a Noun
VP: a phrase (see above) where the obligatory head is a Verb
PP: a phrase (see above) where the obligatory head is a Preposition
Clause structure: typically consists of a subject and a predicate, with any objects and other modifiers
Main clause: a clause in a sentence that would form a complete sentence by itself.
Matrix Clause: contains a subordinate clause and determines the central situation of a sentence.
Subordinate clause: a clause that cannot stand alone and adds information to a sentence
Embedded Clause: a type of subordinate clause placed within the main clause in a sentence. They do not make sense as stand- alone sentences, unlike main clauses.
Recursive Embedded Clauses: the sentence is expressed by using a clause embedded within a clause, embedded within another clause
Complement Clause: a subordinate clause that functions as the subject or object of a verb, thereby completing the sentence
A complement clause may have the marker ACC. It is the object of the sentence: transitive clause
Relative Clause: It has a subject and verb, but can't stand alone as a sentence. It is sometimes called an “adjective clause” because it functions like an adjective—it gives more information about a noun.
Transformations: a syntactic rule that can move an element from one position to another.