linguistics: the scientific study of language

8/17/2019 Linguistics: The scientific study of language

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The sci

ntific study of language


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On human language study

The interest in the nature of human language appears to have arisen when the human speciesevolved in the history of time. There is no culture that has left records that do not reveal eitherphilosophical or practical concerns for this unique human characteristic. Different historical periods

reveal different emphases and different goals although both interests have existed in parallel.

Egyptian surgeons were concerned with clinical questions; an Egyptian papyrus, dated ca. 1700 BC,includes medical descriptions of language disorders following brain injury. The philosophers ofancient Greece, on the other hand, argued and debated questions dealing with the origin and thenature of language. Plato, writing between 427 and 348 BC, devoted his Cratylus Dialogue tolinguistic issues of his day and Aristotle was concerned with language from both rhetorical andphilosophical points of view. The Greeks and the Romans also wrote grammars, and discussed thesounds of language and the structures of words and sentences. This interest continued through themedieval period and the renaissance in an unbroken thread to the present period.

Linguistic scholarship, however, was not confined to Europe; in India the Sanskrit language was thesubject of detailed analysis as early as the twelfth century BC. Panini’s Sanskrit grammar dated ca.500 BC is still considered to be one of the greatest scholarly linguistic achievements. In addition,Chinese and Arabic scholars have all contributed to our understanding of human language.

The major efforts of the linguists of the nineteenth century were devoted to historical and comparativestudies. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), a Swiss linguist in this tradition, turned his attentioninstead to the structural principles of language rather than to the ways in which languages changeand develop, and in so doing, became a major influence on twentieth century linguistics. In Europe

and America, linguists turned to descriptive synchronic studies of languages and to the developmentof empirical methods for their analysis. Scholars from different disciplines and with different intereststurned their attention to the many aspects of language and language use.

American linguists in the first half of the century included the anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884–1939), interested in the languages of the Americas, language and culture, and language in society,and Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949), himself an historical and comparative linguist, as well as amajor descriptive linguist who emerged as the most influential linguist in this period. Both Sapir andBloomfield were also concerned with developing a general theory of language. Sapir was a ‘mentalist’in that he believed that any viable linguistic theory must account for the mental representation of

linguistic knowledge, its ‘psychological reality’; Bloomfield in his later years was a follower ofbehaviorism, which was the mainstream of psychological thought at the time, a view that precludedany concern for mental representation of language and, in fact, for the mind itself.

In Europe, Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), one of the founders of the Prague School of Linguistics,came to America in 1941 and contributed substantially to new developments in the field. Hiscollaboration with Morris Halle and Gunnar Fant led to a theory of Distinctive Features in phonology,


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and Halle has remained one of the leading phonologists of the last decades. In England, phoneticianslike Daniel Jones (1881–1967) and Henry Sweet (1845–1912) (the prototype for G. B. Shaw’s HenryHiggins) have had a lasting influence on the study of the sound systems of language.

In 1957 with the publication of Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky ushered in the era of generative

grammar, a theory which has been referred to as creating a scientific revolution. This theory ofgrammar has developed in depth and breadth. It is concerned with the biological basis for theacquisition, representation and use of human language and the universal principles which constrainthe class of all languages. It seeks to construct a scientific theory that is explicit and explanatory.

Read more on: http://www.phil.uu.nl/~mariekes/it08/Fromkin.pdf

On Linguistics fields of study

Linguistics is the study of language, but there are many subfields that linguists use to analyzelanguage.

Phonetics: The study of the sound units that make up language Phonology: The study of how sounds are distributed and how they interact with each other Morphology: The study of word making Syntax: The study of how words are organized into phrases and then phrases into sentences Semantics: The study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences Pragmatics: The study of how language is used in conversation

Read more on: https://sites.google.com/site/linguisticsinaction/linguistics/subtopics

On the importance of Linguistics

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Phonetics

The study of speech s

CONTENT

AREAS OF PHONETICS

THE INTERNATIONAL

CONSONANTS

Voicing

Place of articulatio

Manner of articula

The symbols

VOWELS

Tongue height

Tongue backness

Lip rounding

Tenseness

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ounds

HONETIC ALPHABET

ion

.

5

5

7

7

7

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9

9

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10

10

1010

10


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Phonetics is the scientificthe scientificthe scientificthe scientific

studystudystudystudy of the sounds ofof the sounds ofof the sounds ofof the sounds of

speechspeechspeechspeech, including their

production and their

perception (...) Studying

phonetics requires a

systematic, conscious

consideration of how

speech sounds are

made, what they sound

like, and how they compare with each other.1

Areas of Phonetics

Articulatory phonetics: The study of how speech sounds are produced by the brain and mouth.Acoustic phonetics: The study of the physics of speech sounds.Auditory phonetics: The study of how sounds are perceived by the ear and brain.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

The IPA was first published in 1888 by the Association Phonétique Internationale (InternationalPhonetic Association), a group of French language teachers founded by Paul Passy. The aim of theorganization was to devise a system for transcribing the sounds of speech which was independent ofany particular language and applicable to all languages.

A phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis was used as a modelfor the IPA. The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words. It has often beenused as a basis for creating new writing systems for previously unwritten languages. The IPA is usedin some foreign language text books and phrase books to transcribe the sounds of languages whichare written with non-latin alphabets. It is also used by non-native speakers of English when learningto speak English.


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The general principle of the IPsegment). This means that it doletters to represent multiple sounand finally, the IPA does not umakes a distinction between the

Among the symbols of the IPA, 1to further specify these sounds, aintonation. These are the charts:

6

is to provide one symbol for each distinctive sos not use letter combinations to represent single s

ds. There are no letters that have context-dependeually have separate letters for two sounds if no k.

07 represent consonants and vowels, 31 are diacritind 19 are used to indicate such qualities as length, t

und (or speechunds, or singlet sound values,nown language

s that are usedone, stress, and


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To print and study:

http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/elt/catalogue/9780194372398-b.pdf?cc=hu&selLanguage=en

Consonants

In Articulatory Phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partialclosure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract thatlies above the larynx. There are mainly three aspects to take into account when describing consonantsounds: voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.

Voicing: In phonetics, voice or voicing is one of the parameters used to describe a sound. It isusually treated as a binary parameter with sounds being described as either voiceless (unvoiced) orvoiced, although in fact there can be degrees of voicing. A voiced sound is one in which the vocalcords vibrate, and a voiceless sound is one in which they do not. Voicing is the difference between

pairs of sounds such as /z/ and /s/ in English. If one places the fingers on the voice box (i.e. thelocation of the Adam's apple in the upper throat), one can feel a vibration when one pronounces zzzz,but not when one pronounces ssss.

Place of articulation: Place of articulation refers to the location of the narrowest part of thevocal tract in producing a sound. It usually involves an active and a passive articulator. The activearticulator usually moves in order to make the constriction. The passive articulator usually just sitsthere and gets approached.

These are the names for the places of articulation used in English:

Bilabial: the articulators are the two lips. English bilabial sounds include [p], [b], and [m].

Labio-dental: The lower lip is the active articulator and the upper teeth are the passive articulators.English labio-dental sounds include [f] and [v].

Dental: these sounds involve the upper teeth as the passive articulator. The active articulator may beeither the tongue tip or (usually) the tongue blade -- diacritic symbols can be used if it matters which.They are often called interdental. English interdental sounds include [θ] and [ð].

Alveolar: these sounds involve the alveolar ridge as the passive articulator. The active articulatormay be either the tongue blade or (usually) the tongue tip -- diacritic symbols can be used if it matterswhich. English alveolar sounds include [t], [d], [r], [n], [s], [z], [l].


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The Symbols

VOWELS

A vowel sound is an OPEN sound produced by not blocking the breath with the lips, teeth, or tongue.It is always voiced and can form a syllable by itself.

Here`s the chart for the vowel sounds in English.


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When describing a vowel, we need to pay attention to the following features: tongue height, tonguebackness, lip rounding and tenseness.

Tongue height : Vowels are classified in terms of how much space there is between the tongueand the roof of the mouth, which is determined by the height of the tongue. There are three primary

height distinctions among vowels: high, low, and mid.

Tongue backness: Vowels are classified in terms of how far the raised body of the tongue isfrom the back of the mouth, which is called the backness (also advancement) of the tongue. Thereare three primary advancement distinctions among vowels: front, back, and central.

Lip rounding : Another aspect of vowel classification is the presence or absence of lip rounding.This characteristic gives way to rounded or unrounded vowels.

Tenseness: Another aspect of vowel classification is commonly characterized in terms of the

tenseness or laxness of the articulators. Some vowels are formed with a high degree of tenseness.Such vowels are called tense vowels. Some vowels are formed without a high degree of tenseness,and are called lax vowels.


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Practice

Read the following passage:

On Phonetics

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Phonology

The study of the sound system oflanguages

CONTENT .

PHONES AND PHONEMES

Minimal pairs

Natural classes

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14

15

ALLOPHONES

Allophonic rules

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DISTRIBUTION

Contrastive distribution

Complementary distribution

Free variation

Phonological problems

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PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES 24


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Phonology, broadly

speaking, is that sub-

discipline within linguistics

concerned with 'the sounds

of language'. More

narrowly, phonology proper

is concerned with theconcerned with theconcerned with theconcerned with the

function, behaviour, andfunction, behaviour, andfunction, behaviour, andfunction, behaviour, and

organization of sounds asorganization of sounds asorganization of sounds asorganization of sounds as

LINGUISTIC itemsLINGUISTIC itemsLINGUISTIC itemsLINGUISTIC items; as opposed to phonetics which is a

rather more ‘neutral’ study of the sounds themselves as

phenomena in the physical world, and the physiological,

anatomical, neurological, and psychological properties of

the human beings that make them.2

Phones and Phonemes

Within phonetics, a phone is a speech sound or gesture considered a physical event without regardto its place in the phonology of a language

a speech segment that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties the basic unit revealed via phonetic speech analysis

A phone is an unanalyzed sound of a language. It is the smallest identifiable unit found in a stream ofspeech that is able to be transcribed with an IPA symbol.

On the other hand, a phoneme is the smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable ofconveying a distinction in meaning, as the m of mat and the b of bat in English. That is, phonemesare sounds can be grouped into distinctive units within a language.


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Here is a chart that compares phones and phonemes:

A phone is … A phoneme is …

One of many possiblesounds in the languages of

the world.

A contrastive unit in the soundsystem of a particular language.

The smallest identifiable

unit found in a stream of

speech.

A minimal unit that serves todistinguish between meanings ofwords.

Pronounced in a defined

way.

Pronounced in one or moreways, depending on the numberof allophones.

Represented between

brackets by convention.

Example: [b], [j], [o]

Represented between slashes

by convention.

Example: /b/, /j/, /o/

Note: There are approximately 44 phonemes in English, and 22 to 24 in Spanish.

Minimal Pairs: In phonetics, a pair of words that differ in one phoneme such as pin and bin /pn,

bn/ or rich and wretch /r t , r t / are called minimal pairs. Slink and shrink are not minimal, as theydiffer in two phonemes. Minimal pairs are used in order to ascertain the phonemes of a language ordialect:

[bit] (beat) /i/

[bt] (bit) //

[bet] (bait) /e/

[bt] (bet) //

[bæt] (bat) /æ/

[but] (boot) /u/

[bot] (boat) /o/

[bt] (bought) //

[bt] (but) //

If we didn’t know any English, these words will help us identify the phonemes in this language. Thatis, the phonetic alphabet of the native speakers of English.


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Natural Classes: A natural class is a set of sounds that have certain phonetic features incommon. All the members of a natural class are affected in the same way in the same environment.Similarly, all members of a natural class have the same effect on other sounds that occur in theirenvironment. For a group of sounds to constitute a natural class: they must all share one or more

features and there should be no other sounds in the language that have this feature or combination offeatures.

In English, voiceless plosives form a natural class; rounded vowels form another, etc. Additionalfeatures include coronals (articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue), sibilant (characterizedby, or producing a hissing sound like that of s or sh), obstruent (formed by obstructing airflow,causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, that is stops, fricative, and affricates), and sonorant(produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract)

AllophonesAn allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language.

Examples in English include the phones [p] and [ph] as in [spt] and [pht]. The [ph] sound is aspirated(the h is the diacritic used in those cases) produced with an extra puff of air. All voiceless stops inEnglish are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable, as in pen, ten or Ken. Acharacteristic most native speakers are unaware of, as they only recognize the phonemes /p//t/or/k/.

This is not necessary true for other languages. In Hindi, for instance, [phl] means fruit and [pl]means moment. That is they are minimal pairs. This means speakers of the Hindi language

recognize both phones as two different entities, two separate phonemes.In final position, some speakers of English do not release the air when producing voiceless stops.This phone is represented by [p¬]. So if we are to map the allophones for the /p/ phoneme, forinstance, we will have something like

/p/

[p] [ph] [p¬]

[p] as in [spt] [ph] as in [pht] [p¬] as in [lp¬]

Note: slashes // are used for phonemic transcriptions (only phonemes are transcribed) whereassquare brackets [ ] are used for phonetic transcriptions.


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The map for /t/ would be

/t/

[t] [th] [t¬] [ ] []

[t] as in [stip] [th] as in [thk] [t¬] as in [spt¬] [ ] as in [phr i:] []as in [sr n]

Allophonic rules: An allophonic rule is a phonological rule that says which allophone realizes aphoneme in a given phonemic environment. In other words, an allophonic rule is a rule that convertsthe phonemes in a phonemic transcription into the allophones of the corresponding phonetictranscription.

Look at the following pairs of words:

[bit] & [bi m̃] [bæt] & [bæ ŋ̃] [phεt] & [phε ñ]

[bεt] & [bε:d] [phæt]& [ phæ:d] [bΛt] & [bΛ:d]

When analyzing vowels in English, we realized they are nasalized (produced with a lowering of thevelum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth) before nasal sounds within thesame syllable. This is shown using the [~] diacritic. We can say this is an allophonic rule for the

English language.

The nasalization rule for the English vowels can be graphically represented as follows:

V → [ + NASAL] / ___ [ + NASAL] (C) # ($)

In which:

V (capital letter) means any vowel sound

→ means “becomes” or “is changed to”

/ means “in the environment of”

____ is placed before or after segments that condition the change.

( ) enclose optional segments, whose presence or absence is irrelevant to the rule

$ indicates a syllable boundary; you can also just use #


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In French, on the other hand, nasal vowels are not allophonic. That is to say they do not follow anyrule. Speakers of that language store oral and nasal vowels separately. They are recognized asdifferent phonemes.

Compare the following minimal pairs:

[la] tired [la ]̃ slow [lo]prize [lo ]̃ long

There´s also another rule for producing vowel sounds in English: when a stressed syllable ends in avoiced consonant, we make the vowel before it longer . The [:] diacritic is used to show suchlengthening. The rule for the vowel lengthening is:

V → [+ LONG] / ___ + VOICED #+ STRESSED

Practice

Each language has its own set of allophonic rules. In Spanish, for example, the word “bebé” ispronounced [bε’ε], the [] phone being a fricative variant of the /b/ phoneme. The [] occurs inbetween vowels. Write the formal representation for this rule:

______________________________________________________

Distribution

In phonetics, distribution is the set of phonetic environments in which a phone (i.e. speech sound)occurs.

Contrastive Distribution

A pair of phones is contrastive if interchanging the two can change the meaning of a word Phones in contrastive distribution are allophones of different phonemes They are unpredictable We can determine that two phones are in contrastive distribution by identifying a minimal

pair. Example: [l] and [r] are in contrastive distribution in [lif] and [rif]

Complementary Distribution A pair of phones is complementary if they never appear in the same phonetic environment Phones in complementary distribution are allophones of the same phoneme They are predictable No minimal pairs can be constructed for allophones of a single phoneme. Example: [p] and

[ph] in English


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Free Variation More than one pronunciation of a given sound may be possible in some phonetic contexts No contrast in meaning is created They are not predictable. Example: [p] – [p¬] are in free variation in [lp] and [lp¬]

Now, distribution depends on the sound system of particular languages. Thus, nasal vowels arein complementary distribution in the English language (oral vowels and nasal vowels are consideredto be the same sounds), but in a contrastive one in French (speakers recognize them as distinctivephonemes). Free variation, on the other hand, may be due to dialectal or sociolectal divide. In somecases, the same person realizes the same phoneme in a different manner in different situations.

Phonological Problems: Part of the phonological study of a language involves looking atdata (phonetic transcriptions of the speech of native speakers) and trying to deduce what theunderlying phonemes are and what the sound inventory of the language is. When analyzing this data,it is important to discover the distribution of phones. This way we will know whether two (or more)

phones are considered allophones of the same phoneme (complementary or free variationdistribution) or distinctive allophones of different phonemes (contrastive distribution). To solvephonological problems, the following flow chart may prove useful:

?

C

?

?

F

C


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Let`s see how it works!

Phonological problem 1: look at the following data from Hindi. Are [t] and [th] allophones ofdifferent phonemes or allophones of the same phoneme in this language?

[tal] ‘postpone’ [thal] ‘place for buying wood’

[tan] ‘mode of singing’ [than] ‘roll of cloth’

As there is a difference in meaning when using [t] or [th] – that is, they form minimal pairs (pairs ofwords which differ in only one string of sound) –we must conclude that these phones are allophonesof different phonemes.

Phonological problem 2 : Analyze this data from Jaqaru (spoken in the Province of Yauyos,Department of Lima, Peru). Are [i] and [e] allophones of different phonemes? Or are they allophonesof a same phoneme?

[jaqi] 'people' [jaqe] 'people'

They are not minimal pairs (as they have the same meaning). They have the same environment. Thatis, in both cases they are in final position and proceeded by a [q] sound. This is clearly seen if we listthe context in which they appear:

[i] [e]

q_# q_#

Note: the underscore sign (_) is the segment being studied, and # marks word boundaries.

They have the same meaning, so we must conclude the two phones are in free variation.

Phonological problem 3: Consider the distribution of [r] and [l] in Korean in the followingwords. Are [r] and [l] allophones of one or two phonemes? (That is, are these sounds storeddifferently in the memory of Korean speakers?)

rubi 'ruby'kiri 'road'saram 'person'

ir mi 'name'radio 'radio'

mul 'water'pal 'big'sul 'Seoul'

ilgop 'seven'ipalsa 'barber'

There are not minimal pairs, so we have to list the environments.


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[r] [l]

# _u u_#

i_i a_#

a_a u_#i_ i_g

# _a a_s

We can see the contexts do not overlap. The [r] is always used before vowel sounds. The [l] is never used before vowels. Now, we need to determine the rule. The base phone is the less predictable one,in this case [l].

[l] → [r] / ___ [+ VOWEL]

Phonological problem 4: Consider the following data from Italian. Are [n] and [ŋ] incomplementary or contrastive distribution?

1. [tinta] ‘dye’ 7. [tiŋgo] ‘I dye’2. [tεnda] ‘tent’ 8. [tεŋgo] ‘I keep’3. [dansa] ‘dance’ 9. [fuŋgo] ‘mushroom’4. [nero] ‘black’ 10. [byaŋka] ‘white’5. [jµεnte] ‘people’ 11. [aŋke] ‘also’6. [sapone] ‘soap’ 12. [faŋgo] ‘mud’

Although [tiŋgo] and [tεŋgo] are in fact minimal pairs, it only means that [i] and [ε] are considered twodifferent phonemes in this language. But we are interested in the distribution for [n]and [ŋ]. There arenot minimal pairs with these two phones, so we list the environment.

[n] [ŋ]i_t i_gε_d ε_ga_s u_g#_e a_kε_t a_ko_e a_g

There are not overlapping contexts. The [ŋ] is always used before [g] and [k]. On the other hand, [n]is never used before [g] and [k]. These two phones share one characteristic: they are velar sounds(so is [ŋ]). We state the rule (the less predictable element is [n]): [n] → [ŋ] / ___ [+ VELAR]


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1. Examine the following words of Tongan, a Polynesian language:

[tauhi] 'to take care' [sino] 'body'

[sisi] 'garland' [totonu 'correct'

[motu] 'island' [pasi] 'to clap'

[mosimosi] 'to drizzle' [fata] 'shelf'

[motomoto] 'unripe' [movete] 'to come apart'

[fesi] 'to break' [misi] 'to dream'

(a) On the basis of these data, determine whether Tongan [s] and [t] are allophones of a singlephoneme or are two separate phonemes. If you find that they are allophones of the same phoneme,state the rule that describes the distribution of each allophone. If they are different phonemes, justifyyour answer. (In Tongan all syllables must end in a vowel.)

(b) In each of the following Tongan words, one sound has been replaced by a blank. This sound iseither [s] or [t]. Without more knowledge of Tongan than you were able to figure out from (a), is itpossible to make an educated guess as to which of these sounds fits in the blank? If so, provide thesound; if not, explain why.

[__ili] 'fishing net' [fe__e] 'lump'

[__uku] 'to place' [lama__i] 'to ambush'

2. The words below come from Maxakali, an Indian language spoken in Brazil. Examine them closely,then answer the questions below them. ([ò] is a palatal nasal.)

[mbep] 'fox'

[da“] 'pot'

[ügahap] 'bottle'

[bep] 'fox'

[gahap] 'bottle'

[ò”okoma] 'below'

[nda“ ] 'pot'

[”okama] 'below'

(a) Are any of [m], [n], [ò], or [ü] (a) phoneme?

(b) Are [m], [n], [ò], [ü] allophones of some phoneme?


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3. Veps is a Finno-Ugric language related to Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian, spoken by peoplesliving in Norther Russia and Karelia. It possesses a series of palatalized consonants parallelling thenon-palatalized ones. Examine the stops in the following data ([p] : [p'], [t] : [t'], [d] : [d'], [k] : [k'] and[g] : [g'] and determine if the palatalized consonants are phonemic or not. If not, what are theconditions on their variation? Remember:

[à] = rounded [e] [y] = rounded [i]

[pada] 'pot' [pordaz] 'ladder' [toda] 'bring' [p'eza] 'nest'

[p'ijo] 'handful' [panda] 'put' [tomi“ine] 'wild cherry' [t'yp'Àk] 'dull'

[darom] 'let' [upota] 'sink' [redukaz] 'dirty' [kod'i] 'house'

[t'ed'i] 'he knew' [k'ida] 'scream' [ sokaz] 'swampy' [g'àgut] 'creek'

[pugad] 'geese' [s'àtan] 'I will feed' [kata] 'cut' [g'Àtab] 'leave'

[rogo] 'stone' [t'àp'àtada] 'inherit' [d'eügad] 'money' [g'À] 'ice'

4. Examine the distribution of the phones [p], [ph], and [b] in the Sindhi language. Determine if thethree are allophones of separate phonemes or allophones of the same phoneme. What is yourevidence? Is the relationship among the sounds the same as in English? Why or why not?

5. Tojolabal is a Mayan language of the Kanjobalan-Chujean family, spoken in Mexico. Determinewhether plain [k] and ejective [k’] are allophones of a single phonemeor in contrast. Support youranswer with specific examples.


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6. Russian is an Indo-European language of the Slavic family. Determine from the following datawhether [a] and [α] complement each other as allophones of the same phoneme, or whether they arein contrast as separate phonemes. If they are separate phonemes, provide evidence for your claim. Ifthey are in complementary distribution, pick one allophone as the basic sound, and give theconditioning phonetic contexts for its allophones.

[a] is a front vowel. [α] is more back. [ł] represents a velarized [l]. [s j] and [m j] are palatalizedconsonants: front part of the tongue is raised, as a secondary articulation.

7. Fijian is an example of a language with prenasalized stops in its phonological inventory. (Theprenasalized stop [nd] consists of a nasal pronounced immediately before the stop, with which itforms a single sound unit.) Consider the following Fijian words as they are pronounced in fastspeech:

vindi 'to spring up' dina 'true'

kenda 'we' dalo 'taro plant'

tiko 'to stay' vundi 'plantain banana'

tutu 'grandfather' manda 'first'

viti 'Fiji' tina 'mother'

dovu 'sugarcane' mata 'eye'

mokiti 'round' dondo 'to stretch out one's hand'

vevendu (a type of plant)

On the basis of these data, determine whether in Fijian [d], [n

d], and [t] are allophones of a singlephoneme or are two or three distinct phonemes. If you find that two of them (or all of them) areallophones of a single phoneme, state the rule that describes the distribution of each allophone. Ifthey are all different phonemes, justify your answer.

Note: In Fijian all syllables must end in a vowel.


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8. Consider the following sounds in the Greek words below.

[x] voiceless velar fricative[k] voiceless velar stop

[c] voiceless palatal stop[ς] voiceless palatal fricative

Which of these sounds are contrastive and which are in complementary distribution? Give thephonetic environments where each sound occurs.

[kano] ‘do’ [kori] ‘daughter’[xano] ‘lose’ [xori] ‘dances’[cino] ‘move’ [xrima] ‘money’[ςino] ‘pour’ [krima] ‘shame’[xufta] ‘handful’ [ceri] ‘candle’[kufeta] ‘bonbons’ [ςeli] ‘eel’[ςeri] ‘hand’ [oςi] ‘no’[kali] ‘charms’ [xali] ‘plight’

Phonological ProcessesIn speech production, there are several processes that occur when we combine certain sounds. Theyare called phonological processes. Here are some of them:

Assimilation: A sound becomes more like a following or a preceding sound (regressive andprogressive assimilation respectively). Ex. In English, /t/ changes to /p/ before /m/ /b/ or /p/: best man,cat burglar, and set point. /m/ /b/ and /p/ are all bilabials, so the /t/ assimilates the point of articulation.

Vowel nasalization for both English and Spanish is another good example of assimilation.

Dissimilation: one of two similar sounds in a word becomes less like the other. For example,[f fθs] ‘fifths’ is usually pronounced [f fts], as it is easier to articulate fricative+stop+fricative ratherthan fricative+fricative+fricative.

Insertion (or Epenthesis): the insertion of a segment or a feature. Ex. in Dutch, melk 'milk' may bepronounced as [melk]. In Spanish, turpial 'troupial' may be pronounced [turupial].

Deletion: the removal of a segment from certain phonetic contexts. In English, a schwa [] is often

deleted when the next vowel in the word is stressed. For example: suppose: [s`poz] is pronounced[s`poz]. Likewise, when one /r/ sound occurs before another in the middle of a word in some dialectsof English, the first tends to drop out, as in "supprise" for surprise, "paticular" for particular, and"govenor" for governor.

Metathesis: the reordering of a sequence of segments. For instance some people say /’æks/ for/`æsk/ ‘ask’ or /’r vlnt/ for /’r lvnt/ ‘relevant’.


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Practice

Find examples for these processes in your own language.

'Haitch' or 'aitch'? How do you pronounce 'H'?By David SillitoBBC arts correspondent

The pronunciation of common words has changed drastically over time. So, as theBritish Library begins a quest to record people's articulations, what do thedifferences in how we pronounce words say about us?

Pedants, beware. The sound of says , ate , mischievous , harass , garage ,schedule and aitch is shifting.

Once upon a time, there were gales of laughter when Frank Spencer in Some

Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em pronounced harass with the emphasis on the secondsyllable.

Now, according to the British Library, evidence suggests that for people under theage of 35, it is becoming the favoured pronunciation.

Indeed the younger you are, the more likely you are to make says rhymewith lays rather than fez , ate rhyme with late rather than bet and to add a wholenew syllable to mischievous , turning it in to miss-CHEEVY-us rather than MISS-chiv-us.

: ://...//11642588

On Phonology

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MORPHOLOGY

The study of the internal structure of

words

CONTENT .

SIMPLE, COMPLEX & COMPOUND WORDS 27

MORPHEMES

Root & affixesAllomorphs

Free & bound morphemes

Inflectional & derivational morphemes

28

2828

28

28

WORD FORMATION (derivation)

Major word formation processes

Minor word formation processes

29

29

29

INFLECTIONInflectional processes

3131


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The term morphology morphology morphology morphology isgenerally attributed to theGerman poet, novelist,playwright, and philosopher

Johann Wolfgang vonGoethe (1749–1832), whocoined it early in thenineteenth century in abiological context. Itsetymology is Greek: morph-means ‘shape, form’, andmorphology is the study of form or forms. In biology

morphology refers to the study of the form and structureof organisms, and in geology it refers to the study of theconfiguration and evolution of land forms. In linguisticsmorphology refers to the mental systhe mental systhe mental systhe mental system involved in wordtem involved in wordtem involved in wordtem involved in wordformationformationformationformation or to the branch of linguistics that deals withthe branch of linguistics that deals withthe branch of linguistics that deals withthe branch of linguistics that deals withwords, their internal structure, and how they are formedwords, their internal structure, and how they are formedwords, their internal structure, and how they are formedwords, their internal structure, and how they are formed.

iii

Simple, Complex and Compound Words

The smallest units of meaning may be whole simple words (e.g. man, run, big) or parts of complexwords (e.g. un-, -faith- and -ful in unfaithful) which are called morphemes. Some morphemes, suchas faith (in unfaithful) or dream (in dreaming) can stand alone as words which make sense. Theseare known as free morphemes. You will see how very many simple words are free morphemes, butcan combine with other morphemes, both free and bound (see below) to form complex words.

Where two simple words are joined together to form a new complete word, this is called a compoundword. Examples include teapot , starlight and careworn. When these terms are first coined, they are

shown in some dictionaries with a hyphen, as in light-house or fish-finger .

Practice

Classify the following into simple, complex or compound words:

Banana, socks, international, newspaper, everything, message, super-housekeeper,antidisestablishmentarianism


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Morphemes

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning (such as tall and est in tallest).

Root and affixes: a root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significantaspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents (such as tall in tallest).On the other hand, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a base morpheme such as a root or toa stem, to form a word. These morphemes (collectively called affixes) cannot stand alone – theyneed to be part of a complex word to make sense.

Affixes can be classified depending on their position with reference to the root:

* Prefixes (attached before another morpheme). Ex.: disadvantage, copilot.

* Suffixes (attached after another morpheme). Ex.: childish, bravery.

* Infixes (inserted within another morpheme). Ex.: in Tagalog, sulat means "write", while sinulatmeans "written."

* Circumfixes (attached before and after another morpheme or set of morphemes). Ex.: In Hungarian,legnagyobb means "biggest". The root is nagy, which means "big."

Free and bound morphemes: affixes are said to be bound morphemes in that they have tobe attached to other morphemes. Some roots cannot stand alone as words as well. They are alsobound morphemes (bound roots). “Geo” as in geology is a good example of a bound root. The othersare called free morphemes as they do not need to be accompanied by other particles.

Inflectional and derivational morphemes: according to their function, morphemes canalso be classified into inflectional or derivational.

An inflectional morpheme creates a change in the function of the word. Example: the ed in invit ed indicates past tense. English has only seven inflectional morphemes: -s (plural) and -s (possessive)are noun inflections; -s (3rd-person singular), -ed (past tense), -ed /-en (past participle), and -ing (present participle) are verb inflections; -er (comparative) and -est (superlative) are adjective andadverb inflections. In English, inflectional morphemes can only be suffixes, which is not necessarilytrue for other languages.

On the other hand, a derivational morpheme changes the meaning of the word or the part ofspeech or both. Derivational morphemes create new words. Example: the prefix and derivationalmorpheme un added to invited changes the meaning of the word (uninvited).

Allomorphs: Morphemes can undergo certain changes. Allomorphs are different phonetic formsor variations of a morpheme. Example: The final morphemes in the following words are pronounceddifferently, but they all indicate plurality: dogs, cats, and horses. Likewise, “an” is an allomorph for“a”, as in “an apple.”


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Practice

Separate the following words into roots and affixes:Different – enrichment – awareness – antioxidants – illegal

Classify the morphemes into free or bound :

Aircrafts – fruitful – elephant – morphology – contraceptiveClassify the bound morphemes into inflectional or derivational :Productivity – capitalism – deserved – clicks – darker – undo

Extra practice

Try and divide different words into morphemes, then classify them.

Word Formation (Derivation)

In its wider sense word formation denotes the processes of creation of new lexical units.

Major word formation processes

Affixation: morphological process whereby a base may be extended by one or more affixes.Examples (from English):

Repaint, disable, ultrasonic, successful, improvement, disciplinary.

Compounding: a process in which two different words are joined together to denote one thing.Examples (from English):

Flower -pot, fingerprint, looking glass, fire-fly, keyboard, blood-vessel.

Minor word formation processes

Null affixation: a process by which new words are formed by adding an affix which happens to be

phonologically null. In simpler terms, a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix. It's also called zeromorpheme. Examples (from English):

I always stay in that hotel.He`ll have a short stay in this town.

You cannot conduct business like this.Their conduct was intolerable.


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Reduplication: a morphological process by which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, isrepeated. Examples:

kagir 'belt' → kagirgir ' to wear a belt' (from Marshallese)mahuta 'to sleep' → mahutamahuta 'to sleep constantly' (from Motu)

Blend: this process is very similar to compounding, but it is characterized by taking only parts ofwords and joining them. Examples (from English): smoke and fog → ‘smog’motor and hotel → ‘motel’

Spanish and English → ‘Spanglish’Work and alcoholic → ‘workaholic’

Abbreviations: An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Clipped words, acronyms,stub compounds, and alphabetisms are all referred to as abbreviations.

Acronyms are words made from the first part of several words, usually from the first sound. Examples(from English):

Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus → ‘scuba’RAdio Detection And Ranging→ ‘radar’Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome → ‘aids’

Alphabetisms are groups of letters that are pronounced separately, but form a word. Examples (fromEnglish):

Disk Jockey → ‘DJ’Very Important People → ‘VIP’

United States of America → ‘USA’Compact Disc → ‘CD’

Clipping is the reduction of a word to one of its parts. Examples (from English):Bicycle → ‘bike’Laboratory → ‘lab’

Veterinarian → ‘vet’Doctor → ‘doc’

Stub- compounds are phonological sub-parts of compound elements. Examples (from English):Science fiction → ‘Sci-fi’ Physical education → ‘Physed’

Back formation: the process of creating a new "word" by removing actual or supposed affixes.Examples (from English):

Editor → ‘edit’ (a verb was created from an existing noun)Enthusiasm → ‘enthuse’ (a verb was created from an existing noun)Pease → ‘pea’ ( pease was originally the singular form)

Borrowings: taking over words from other languages. Examples:From Arabic to English → ‘alcohol’

From German to English → ‘pretzel’

From Turkish to English → ‘yoghurt’

From Czech to English → ‘pistol’

Coinage: the invention of totally new terms. Examples (from English): ‘Aspirin’, ‘Nylon, ‘Kleenex ’

Practice

Look for examples of these processes in English and/or in your own language.


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Inflection

Inflection indicates something about a word’s syntactic context or role in the sentence. Inflectionalmorphemes signal grammatical information such as number (plural), tense, possession and so on.They are thus often called bound grammatical morphemes.

Inflectional processes

Affixation: the result of adding an affix to a root word. Examples (from English):Accept → ‘accepted’ Tall → ‘taller’

Reduplication: a morphological process by which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, isrepeated. Example (from Warlpiri):

kamina ‘girl’ → kamina-kamina ‘girls’

Suppletion: the replacement of one stem with another, resulting in an allomorph of a morpheme

which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs. Examples (from English):Good → ‘better’ Go → ‘went’

Partial suppletion: the partial replacement of one stem with another. Examples (from English):Bring → ‘br ought’ Send → ‘sent’

Ablaut: a vowel change that accompanies a change in grammatical function. Examples (fromEnglish):

Sing → ‘sang’ Foot → ‘f eet’

PracticeName the inflectional process in each case:Cutest – mice – studying – chosen – was

On Morphology

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SYNTAX

The study of the principles and rules for

constructing sentences in natural

languages

CONTENT .

SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES

Lexical categories

Functional categories

Phrasal categories

33

33

34

34

CONSTITUENTS

Constituency tests

35

36

PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES 37

SYNTACTIC TREE DIAGRAMS 38

AMBIGUITY

Lexical and structural ambiguity

40

40

WORD ORDER 42


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The term 'syntax' is from the AncientGreek sýntaxis, a verbal noun whichliterally means 'arrangement' or'setting out together'. Traditionally, it

refers to the branch of grammarthe branch of grammarthe branch of grammarthe branch of grammardealing with the ways in whichdealing with the ways in whichdealing with the ways in whichdealing with the ways in whichwordswordswordswords, with or without appropriateinflections, are arranged to showare arranged to showare arranged to showare arranged to showconnections of meaning within theconnections of meaning within theconnections of meaning within theconnections of meaning within thesentencesentencesentencesentence. First and foremost, syntaxdeals with how sentences areconstructed and users of human languages employ a

striking variety of possible arrangement of the elements insentences.

4

Syntactic Categories

Sentences are made of different elements at different levels. Every element is a sub-unit, and eachone of them belongs to a syntactic category. In the sentence “my sister bought a new car”, the word“sister” is a unit (a noun), the phrase “my sister” is also a unit (the subject), and even “bought a newcar” works as a one (predicate). Thus, a syntactic category is a set of words and/or phrases in a

language which share a significant number of common characteristics. The classification is based onsimilar structure and distribution, and not on meaning. There are three types of syntactic categories.

Lexical categories: a lexical category is a syntactic category for elements that are part of thelexicon of a language. These elements are at the word level. They are also known as parts ofspeech, and here is a rough description:

Noun: A noun is a naming word. It names a person, place, thing, idea, living creature, quality, oraction. Examples: cowboy, theatre, box, thought, tree, kindness, arrival .

Verb: A verb is a word which describes an action (doing something) or a state (being something).Examples: walk, talk, think, believe, live, like, want .

Adjective: An adjective is a word that describes a noun. It tells you something about the noun.Examples: big, yellow, thin, amazing, beautiful, quick, important .


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Adverb: An adverb is a word which usually describes a verb. It tells you how something is done. Itmay also tell you when or where something happened. Examples: slowly, intelligently, well,yesterday, tomorrow, here, everywhere.

Pronoun: A pronoun is used instead of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun. Examples: I, you, he,

she, it, we, they.

Conjunction: A conjunction joins two words, phrases or sentences together. Examples: but, so,and, because, or.

Preposition: A preposition usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. Examples: of,with, for, about .

Phrasal categories: A phrasal category is a unit of language larger than a word but smallerthan a sentence. They include:

Noun phrases: a phrase whose head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set ofmodifiers. Examples: Mary, a nice guy, a long trip to Europe.

Verb phrases: a verb phrase is a syntactic unit that corresponds to the predicate and whosehead is the verb. Examples: work, is studying, reads a magazine.

Adjective phrases: a phrase whose head is an adjective, optionally accompanied by a set ofmodifiers. Examples: really bad, attractive, good at math.

Prepositional phrases: a phrase whose head is preposition and is accompanied by a noun orpronoun as complement. Examples: for your information, on that desk, near me.

Adverbial phrases: a phrase whose head is an adverb. Examples: beautifully, really loudly.

Functional categories: a functional category fulfills a grammatical purpose, such as that ofdeterminers and auxiliaries.

NOTE: There are about 50 different determiners in the English language they include:

Articles: a, an, theDemonstratives: this, that, these, those, etc.Possessives: my, your, our, their, his, hers, whose, my friend's, our friends', etc.Quantifiers: few, a few, many, much, each, every, some, any etc.Numbers: one, two, three, twenty, fortyOrdinals: first, second, last, next, etc.


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Practice

Label each word according to their parts of speech. Then, separate and classify the phrases.

A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years. (Wendell L. Willkie) Our language is funny - a fat chance and slim chance are the same thing. (J. Gustav White)

A different language is a different vision of life. (Federico Fellini)

Constituents

In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit withina hierarchical structure, that is, a constituent is one of two or more grammatical units that entersyntactically or morphologically into a construction at any level. Words are the smallest constituentsin a sentence, and they combine into larger constituents. When constituents in a sentence can becombined into larger and larger units, these ever larger units form a hierarchy of sentenceconstituents.

For instance, the noun plan (which is a constituent) combined with the determiner this (which isanother constituent) forms the noun phrase this plan (yet another constituent). We can add a verb toform a sentence: this plan works. We can expand the predicate adding the prepositional phrase forme and/or the noun phrase every time, and we will have: this plan works for me every time.

The hierarchy of these sentence constituents can be seen in the following:

S

(Sentence)

NP VP(Noun phrase) (Verb phrase)

N V NP

N

Susie likes bananas


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S

(Sentence)

NP VP(Noun phrase) (Verb phrase)

Det N V NP PP

Prep NP Det. N

PRO

This plan works for me every time

Note: every blue dot corresponds to a sentence constituent.

Constituency tests: these are certain ways to know whether a string of words form a constituentwithin a particular sentence. They may prove very useful when you are in doubt. Some of them are:

Substitution: My niece read that book She read it She did

(But niece read is not a constituent)

Questions: My niece read that book for her upcoming test last week

Who? My nieceWhat? read that book for her upcoming test last weekWhat? that bookWhy? for her upcoming testWhen? last week(But book for her is not a constituent)


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Movement : Susan went shopping at noon yesterdayYesterday, Susan went shopping at noonAt noon, Susan went shopping yesterday

(But noon yesterday is not a constituent)

Deletion: Your most talented father teaches poetry in the summerYour father teaches poetry in the summerYour most talented father teaches in the summerYour most talented father teaches poetry.

(But your most is not a constituent)

Practice

Apply suitable constituency tests in order to find constituents in the following sentences:

Michael Jackson will now be buried on September 3rd in Los Angeles. Michael Jackson's death was a huge blow to his fans around the world, and naturally, it has

generated a resurgence of interest in Michael Jackson memorabilia. American superstar Michael Jackson was born in Indiana, on August 29, 1958, and

entertained audiences nearly his entire life. Michael's singing and dancing talents wereamazingly mature, and he soon became the dominant voice and focus of The Jackson 5.

Phrase Structure Rules (PSR)

Phrase-structure rules are a way to describe a given language's syntax. That is, they are arepresentation of the syntactic structures of those languages, and are used to break a naturallanguage sentence down into its constituent parts.

Phrase structure rules are usually of the form X Y Z, meaning that the constituent X isseparated into the two sub-constituents Y and Z.

Here are some (simplified) PSRs for the English language:S → NP Aux VPNP → (Det) (AP) (N) N (PP) (CP)AP → (ADV P )Adj (PP)PP → (ADV P ) Prep NPVP→ (Adv P) V (NP) (AP) (Adv P) (PP) (CP)ADV P → (Adv P) AdvCP → Compl S


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In theory, we can generate all sofrom the rule: NP → (Det) (AP) (

Secret N

The secret DET N

The big secret DET ADJ N

The big secret in your closet

Practice

Generate English phrases and s

Syntactic Tree Diagrams

The structure of phrases and sendiagrams. For instance, the phrabetween the boards of the two c

38

ts of grammatically correct sentences following thes) N (PP) (CP), we can get:

ET ADJ N PP

ntences using PSRs.

tences can be graphically represented using syntacses angry with you, proud of it , sorry about that, andmpanies are represented as follows:

rules. Thus,

ic treethe agreement


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Now, let`s look at several senten

39

es:


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For more information on tree structure diagrams:http://books.google.com/books?id=Zw5Y0o0q1bYC&pg=PA90&dq=tree+diagram&ei=SmqUSqykJ4XUM67OtLMH#v=onepage&q=tree%20diagram&f=false

Practice

Draw syntactic tree diagrams for the following sentences:

Huck Finn was a homeless boy. Tom started a fight with the new boy in town. Peter’s friends were painting the fence for him. The guy you hired yesterday was living in the streets. Susie sold the car she won last year.

Ambiguity

In some cases, a phrase or sentence can be interpreted two or more ways as a result of theirgrammatical construction. This syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of singlewords, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentencestructure implied thereby.

Lexical and Structural Ambiguity

A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. The word 'light', for

example, can mean not very heavy or not very dark. Words like 'light', 'note', 'bear' and 'over' arelexically ambiguous. They induce ambiguity in phrases or sentences in which they occur, such as'light suit' and 'The duchess can't bear children'. However, phrases and sentences can be ambiguouseven if none of their constituents is. The phrase 'porcelain egg container' is structurally ambiguous,as is the sentence 'The police shot the rioters with guns'. Ambiguity can have both a lexical and astructural basis, as with sentences like 'I left her behind for you' and 'He saw her duck'.

Read more on: ://..//.

Let`s take a look at the following sentences:I know a man with a dog who has fleas

Who`s got fleas? Is it the man or the dog?

Free whalesIs it a command to let them loose? Are they giving away whales?

They gave the children the books on the floorWere the children on the floor? Were the books on the floor?


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Tree diagrams should solve the ambiguity:

S

NP AUX VP

(Present)PRON V NP

DET N PP

I know a man with a dog who has fleas

MEANING: the dog has fleas

S

NP AUX VP

(Present)PRON V NP

DET N PP CP

I know a man with a dog who has fleas

MEANING: the man has fleas

It is not uncommon to see ambiguity in newspaper headlines:

GIANT POLICE EXERCISE TO GUARD BUSH

TEACHER STRIKES IDLE KIDS

NIGERIAN TALKS IN LONDON


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Practice

Draw trees to solve the ambiguity: Free whales They gave the children the books on the floor

Word OrderIn linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of alanguage, and how different languages can employ different orders. There are six theoreticallypossible basic word orders for the transitive sentence: subject verb object (SVO), subject object verb(SOV), verb subject object (VSO), verb object subject (VOS), object subject verb (OSV) and objectverb subject (OVS). The overwhelming majority of the world's languages are either SVO or SOV, witha much smaller but still significant portion using VSO word order.

An example of SVO order in English is:

Sam ate the orangesS V O

This example from Japanese shows a SOV word order:watashi wa hako wo akemasu

S O V(I) (a/the box/boxes) (open)

Arabic favors VSO:al-kitāba al-mudarrisu Qara'a

V S O

(read) (the teacher) (the book)

We can see a VOS structure in the Fijian language:E rai-c-a na no-na vale na gone

V O S(sees) (his house) (the child)

The rare sequence OSV is found in Nadëb (spoken in Brazil):awad kalapéé hapu h́

O S V(jaguar) (child) (sees)

Hixkaryana (also spoken in Brazil) has an OVS sequence:toto y-ahos-ye kamara

O V S(man) (grabbed) (jaguar)


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Note: Word order MEANS in English. That is, one of the important ways we secure meaning inEnglish is by putting words in a certain order. Consider the following sentences.

The dog chases the cat. The cat chases the dog.

Blowing down the chimney, the wind chilled the girl. The wind chilled the girl blowing down the chimney. He also longs for great success abroad in the field of dramatic music. He longs for great success also abroad in the field of dramatic music. He longs for great success abroad also in the field of dramatic music.

You can easily see that each member of a group means differently, but the only difference in eachcase is a different word order. On the other hand, consider these Latin sentences and my word-by-word rendering into English.

Puer amat puellam. Puellam amat puer.

Puellam puer amat. Amat puer puellam.

In each, the order is different, but each means "the boy loves the girl," because Latin is an inflectedlanguage and doesn't depend on word order to convey meaning.

On Syntax

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Semantics

The study of meaning

CONTENT .

LEXICON 45

THE PRINCIPLE OF COMPOSITIONALITY 46

SENSE AND REFERENCE 46

SEMANTIC PROPERTY, SEMANTIC CLASS & SEMANTIC

FEATURE

46

NYM WORDS 47

POLYSEMY 48

AMBIGUITY 48

THEMATIC ROLES 49

ANOMALY, IDIOMS & METAPHORS 50


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Semantics is the study ofthe study ofthe study ofthe study of

meaning communicatedmeaning communicatedmeaning communicatedmeaning communicated

through languagethrough languagethrough languagethrough language… One of

the insights of modern

linguistics is that that speakers

of a language have different

types of linguistic knowledge

including how to pronounce

words, how to construct sentences, and about the

meaning of individual words and sentences. To reflect

this, linguistic description has different levels of analysis.

So phonology is the study of what sounds a language has

and how these sounds combine to form words; syntax is

the study of how words can be combined into sentences;

and semantics is the study of the meaning of words and

sentences.v

Lexicon

In linguistics, lexicon is a term used to describe the total inventory of morphemes in a givenlanguage, and the inventory of base morphemes plus their combinations with derivationalmorphemes. Mental lexicon, on the other hand, is the store of words in a person's mind, that is, itrefers to a language user's knowledge of words, the vocabulary and the representation of knowledgeabout words in minds. The mental lexicon differs radically from a dictionary. There are so manywords and they are found so fast. Native speakers can recognize a word of their language in 200

microseconds or less and can reject a non-word sound sequence in about half a second. In a 1940study Seashore & Erickson estimated that an educated adult knows more than 150,000 words and isable to use 90% of these.

‧

‧‧

‧

‧

‧‧

‧

1

technical all the words and phrases used in a language or that a particular person knows

2 [countable] an alphabetical list of words with their meanings, especially on a particular subject or in a

particular language: a lexicon of geographical terms


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The Principle of CompositionalityThe meaning of the whole is a function of the meaning of the parts.

The principle of compositionality states that the meaning of a compound expression is a function of

the meaning of its parts and of the syntactic rule by which they are combined. In plain words, themeaning of a complex expression is the result of both, the meaning of individual units and the waythose units are combined. For instance, the expressions a good scare and a bad scare have justabout the same meaning, even though good and bad are opposites. Likewise, the sentences the tiredgirl arrived and the girl arrived tired do not have the same meaning (same words, different order). InSpanish, for example, una mesa buena (in good condition) is not the same as una buena mesa (withplenty of food). The expressions "half full" and "half empty" don't really have the same meanings buthappen to be applicable to the same state of affairs.

Sense and Reference Sense and reference are two different aspect of meaning. Roughly speaking, a term's reference isthe object it refers to and its sense is the way in which it refers to that object. For example, the twoexpressions 'the morning star' and 'the evening star' have the same reference, since they eachreferred to the same planet. But they could not be said to have the same sense. The phrases theman who wrote Cien años de Soledad , el Gabo and Gabriel García Marquez have the samereference, but different sense, so do the Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps, and New York City.

Semantic Property, Semantic Class & Semantic Feature

The term semantic property refers to the components of meaning of a particular word. Thus, male isa semantic property that helps to define father, son, dad, stud, man, rooster, bull among others. Thefirst three in the list are also distinguished by the semantic property human, which is also found inconstruction worker, actor, artist, writer, astronaut, child, or baby. The last two of these words arealso distinguished by "young." Words that share a semantic property form a semantic class.Semantic classes may intersect. The intersection of female and young can be girl.

A semantic feature is a notational method which can be used to express the existence or non-

existence of semantic properties by using plus and minus signs.Man is [+HUMAN] [+MALE] [+ADULT]Woman is [+HUMAN] [-MALE] [+ADULT]Boy is [+HUMAN] [+MALE] [-ADULT]

Our knowledge of the semantic properties of words prevents us from saying things like: The Pope is pregnant , or my sister is an only child .


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Nym (name) WordsThe particle nym comes from Greek (meaning name), and is usually used as a suffix.

Homonyms: words that sound like one another but have different meanings.Sea and See Ate and Eight Bank and Bank

Heteronyms: words that are spelled identically but have different meanings.Lead /lid/and Lead /ld/ Bow /bow/ and Bow /baw/

Antonyms: a word opposite in meaning to another.Gradable antonyms: Antonyms that have degrees of variation between the two opposites:

Clod/Hot Big/Small Wide/Narrow

Complementary antonyms: Antonyms that an “either/or” relationship:Married/Single Absent/Present Alive/Dead

Relational opposites: One exists only because the other does:Husband/Wife Doctor/ Patient Lend/Borrow

Synonyms: different words with identical or very similar meanings.Sick/Ill Buy/Purchase Intelligent/Smart

Retronyms: A word or phrase created because an existing term that was once used alone needsto be distinguished from a term referring to a new development.

Pocket Watch Analog Phone Acoustic Guitar

Hypernyms: a word that is more generic than a given word.Flower Color Apes

Hyponyms: a specific term used to designate a member of a class.

Rose, Tulip, Forget-Me-Not, Lilies/ Red, White, Blue, Black/ Monkeys, Gorillas, Chimpanzees

Metonyms: A word or phrase used in place of another with which it is closely associated.The White House (meaning the American government)The number one racquet (tennis player)The British Crown (Monarchy of the United Kingdom)


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PolysemyPolysemy comes from Neo-Latin polysemia, which comes from Greek polusemous [poly- (many) +sema (sign)] giving us a linguistic term, "having many meanings" or multiple meanings. The wordspolysemy and polysemous are defined as "having or characterized by many meanings; the existence

of several meanings for a single word or phrase". This should not be confused with homonymy, for aword is polysemous when it has multiple (semantically or historically) related meanings. On the otherhand, homonymy refers to two or more different words that happen to have the same pronunciation.

In the sentences:a) Dogs would always bark at strangers. (Bark: sound made by a dog)b) She barked into the Dictaphone. (Bark: speak in an unfriendly tone)c) Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. (Bark: tough protective covering of thewoody stems and roots of trees and other woody plants)

Bark in sentence a) and b) is the same word (used differently), in c) is another word.

AmbiguityPolysemy and homonymy could bring about semantic ambiguity. That is, words, phrases andsentences may have multiple (plausible) interpretations. For instance, the sentence: she can’t bearchildren may be interpreted two ways. Either she cannot have children, or she doesn’t like them.

Other examples: 1683 guitar players assembled in the stadium to play a song together from Deep Purple, and

there was not a single woman among them. (Were all the women married?) John loves his mother and so does Bill. (Whose mother does Bill love?) Kids make nutritious snacks. (Can we eat them?) Local high school dropouts cut in half. (Did any survived?) Crack Found on Governor's Daughter. (Did it hurt?)


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Thematic RolesThematic role is the semantic relationship between a predicate (a verb) and an argument (the nounphrases) of a sentence. Thematic roles include:

Agent: deliberately performs the action. Examples:Bill ate his soup quietly/ The second letter was written by Max

Experiencer : receives sensory or emotional input. Examples:His little girl adores him /The smell of lilies filled Jennifer's nostrils

Theme: Is the recipient of an action but does not change its state. Examples:Jimmy was first considered to fill the vacancy / Bill saw a giant tree.

Patient: undergoes the action and has its state changed. Examples:

The falling rocks crushed the car / The forest was completely destroyed by the hurricane.

Instrument: used to carry out the action. Examples:This corkscrew has opened a wide variety of wines /Jamie cut the ribbon with a pair of scissors

Cause: mindlessly performs the action. Examples:The forest was completely destroyed by the hurricane/ An avalanche destroyed the ancient temple.

Locative: where the action occurs. Examples:The hotel hosted seven hundred guests/ Johnny and Linda played carelessly in the park.

Goal: what the action is directed towards. Examples:The M60 bus goes from La Guardia to Manhattan/ It continued on toward the distant oasis.

Source: where the action originated. Examples:The bus goes from La Guardia to Manhattan/ The rocket was launched from Central Command.

Temporal: when the action occurs. Examples:That day was a little bit hectic/ The rocket was launched that night

Path: the path taken in moving from one place to another. Examples:The ball rolled from the door down the hallway to the kitchen/ He traveled over the mountains.

Recipient: Entity receiving some entity. Examples:The workers were given a raise / John bought Mary a present


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Anomaly, Idioms & MetaphorsAt some level, the sentence colorless green ideassleep furiously is OK; at another, however, it iswildly wrong. At the syntactic level, it is the

equivalent of "Colorful red umbrellas movedplayfully", with a subject noun modified by anadjective and a verb modified by an adverb.However, the sentence does not make sensebecause things logically cannot be colorless andgreen simultaneously, ideas cannot sleep andnothing can sleep furiously. Such sentences aregrammatically correct but semantically anomalous.

So, it would seem that the structure of sentences and their meaning are two distinct things,representing two different levels of language processing.

A metaphor , on the other hand, is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that denotes acertain object or idea is applied to another word or phrase to imply some similarity between them.Metaphors are well known as a stylistic feature of literature, but in fact are found in almost alllanguage use, other than simple explanations of physical events in the material world. Speakers andwriters use metaphors for several reasons:

Metaphors can help readers or listeners to better understand something about the object or

idea to which the metaphor is being applied. Metaphors can make speaking and writing more lively and interesting. Metaphors can communicate a great deal of meaning with just a word or a phrase. Metaphors, because they imply rather than directly state relationships, can get listeners and

readers to think about what they are hearing or reading.

For example, if someone says “my father was an ice cube”, it might mean that hewas showing no emotions whatsoever (as cold as an ice cube), or that he wasfreezing (from cold weather).

On the other hand, if someone says “my friend is hot”, it mightunderstood literal or metaphorically.


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Finally, an idiom is a group of words which, when used together, has a different meaning from theone which the individual words have. For example:

- How do you know about John's illness?- Oh, a little bird told me.

Of course, the second speaker does not mean he heard the news from a little bird.

We use idioms to express something that other words do not express asclearly or as cleverly. We often use an image or symbol to describesomething as clearly as possible and thus make our point as effectivelyas possible. For example, "in a nutshell" suggests the idea of having allthe information contained within very few words. Idioms tend to beinformal and are best used in spoken rather than written English.

On Semantics:

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Pragmatics

The study of the ways contextcontributes to meaning

CONTENT .

TYPES OF PRAGMATIC CONTEXTS 53

MAXIMS OF CONVERSATION 54

SPEECH ACTS 55

DEIXIS 56

THE MEANING OF SENTENCES 57

PRESUPPOSITIONS 57


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Crystal (1997) proposes that

pragmatics is "the study of

language from the point of view

of users, especially of the choices

they make, the constraints they

encounter in using language in

social interaction and effects their

use of language has on the other

participants in an act of

communication". In other words, pragmatics is the studythe studythe studythe study

of communicative action in its socioof communicative action in its socioof communicative action in its socioof communicative action in its socio- -- -cultural contextcultural contextcultural contextcultural context.vi

Types of Pragmatic ContextsIn order to fully understand any utterances, we must consider the contextual information. Wedistinguish the following contexts:

Physical context : the location of a given word, the situation in which it is used, as well astiming, all of which aid proper understating of the words.Ex. “Please, be here on time.” (The place depends on the location of speakers.)

Epistemic context : what speakers know about the world.Ex. “I told my BF to google it, but he`s kind of a NOOB”. (We have to be familiar with the Internetslang).

Linguistic context : the set of words that surround the lexical item in question in the same

phrase, or sentence.Ex. “I told you so”. (What?)

Social context : the social relationship among speakers and hearers.Ex. “Yes, your honor”. (You`re probably addressing a judge)


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Maxims of ConversationIn linguistics, maxims of conversation refer to the (usually) unwritten, subconscious rules that governhow people talk to each other, and what constitutes cooperative (or "polite") conversation. Grice'sConversational Maxims include:

Maxim of Quantity: Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as necessary. Do not make your contribution to the conversation more informative than necessary.

Maxim of Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Maxim of Relevance: Be relevant (i.e., say things related to the current topic of the conversation).

Maxim of Manner : Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid unnecessary wordiness). Be orderly.

Maxims can be used in three basic ways:

1. Exploit - to exploit a maxim is to follow it. Example:

A- How’s your husband?

B- Much better, thanks.

2. Flout - to go against the command of a maxim in order to achieve a certain end (certain effect thatis understood by the listener). Example:

A- How’s your husband?B- Thanks God hell doesn’t need another lawyer.

3. Violate - to go against a maxim, causing communicational breakdown. Example:

A- How’s your husband? B- Yes thanks.


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Speech ActsThe philosopher J.L. Austin (1911-1960) claims that many utterances (things people say) areequivalent to actions. When someone says: “I name this ship” or “I now pronounce you man andwife”, the utterance creates a new social or psychological reality. We can add many more examples:

Sergeant Major: Squad, by the left… left turn!

Referee: (Pointing to the centre circle) Goal!

Groom: With this ring, I thee wed.

There are all sorts of other things we can do with words. We can make requests, ask questions, giveorders, make promises, give thanks, offer apologies, and so on.

When analyzing speech acts, we must pay attention to two aspects: form and function. According tosyntactic forms, sentences can be classified into declarative, interrogative or imperative. If we takeinto consideration their function, we may have assertion, question or directive sentences.

For instance, the statement “Susan goes to the movies every Thursday ” has the form of a declarativesentence (subject-verb-complement), and it’s an assertion (speech act in which something is claimedto hold). Likewise, “Does Susan go to the movies every Thursday ?” is an interrogative sentence(auxiliaries, or subject-verb inversion, question marks), and a question (it asks for information). Thesentence “Go to your room” is in the imperative form (predicates that only contain verbs in infinitiveform), and fulfills the directive function (a command or request).

But, this is not always the case. The statement “Those dishes aren't going to clean themselves” is inthe declarative form, but may be a directive. Even if it is made into an interrogative one “Do you think

those dishes aren't going to clean themselves”, it still can be a request or command.PracticeAnalyze the following sentences in terms of form and function

A- Will you be here early tomorrow?B- Have I ever been late to class? ______________________________A- Why don’t you be quiet?

F

F


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Deixis

The term deixis refers to the use of words or phrases that can only be understood from the context ofthe text or utterance where they are found. Deictic words are language features that refer to the who,

where and when of language. They provide context in relation to the speaker. There are severaltypes.

Person deixis: deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, theaddressee, and referents which are neither speaker nor addressee (I, you, she).

Place deixis: words describing the speaker in space or in relation to other objects such as hereand there.

Time deixis: words describing the speaker in terms of time such as now, then, yesterday and verbtenses.

Discourse deixis: deictic reference to a portion of a discourse relative to the speaker's currentlocation in the discourse.

Social deixis: The use of forms which reflect the social status of a speaker in relation either to theaddressee or to someone else referred to (French: tu and vous).

Practice

Find deictic elements in the following extract:

Kristi was devastated. She wanted to get back together with ex-boyfriend Thad. Thadhad told her that he needed some “space.” Thad said that he still cared for her butdidn’t want to date exclusively any more.

What should Kristi do to get back together with ex Thad? Should she call him and texthim? Should she show up and flirt with his friends? Should she ignore him completely?

Actually, she should do none of these. Instead, she should listen to him.

He says that he loves her but that he needs space. While this may seem like a cliché,the truth is that many times when people use this line they mean what they say…

(From:http://www.interestingarticles.net/relationships/Get%20Back%20Together%20With%20Ex%20-%20Listen%20To%20Him.asp)


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The Meaning of Sentences

Paraphrases: two or more sentences that mean exactly the same though using different words orstructures. (Ex. the aurora borealis can be observed in the early morning hours, and you can watchthe aurora borealis early in the morning.)

Analytic sentences: sentences that are true by definition, and are generally self-explanatory(Ex. Bachelors are unmarried men, two halves make up a whole).

Ambiguous sentences: sentences that have more than one possible meaning. (Ex. Put thebox on the table by the window in the kitchen.)

Contradictory sentences: statements which are necessarily false for there is a logicalincompatibility. (Ex. I accidentally did it on purpose)

Presuppositions

A presupposition is a background belief relating to an utterance, which must be mutually known orassumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context.This will generally remain such a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the formof an assertion, denial, or question. For instance, if someone says “I’ll never watch that show again”,it means the person has watched the show at least once.

Practice

Which are the presuppositions in the following statements?

Jane no longer writes fiction. John regrets that he stopped doing linguistics before he left Cambridge. I couldn’t sleep at all after I saw Friday the 13th.

On Pragmatics:

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References

http://babelnet.sbg.ac.at/themepark/grammar/morphology.htm http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/caneng/morpheme.htm http://www.tlumaczenia-angielski.info/linguistics/word-formation.htm

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Phrase-structure-rules http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/06senten/ambiguity.html http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/StudyZone/330/grammar/parts.htm http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Linguistic-typology http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/dobbs/drsyntax/order.html http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Consonants http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/sec3/poa-big.htm http://en.allexperts.com/e/v/vo/voice_(phonetics).htm http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/sec3/moa.htm http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/343025/liquid http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Phonetics/Vowels/Phonetics4b.html

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Allophonic_rule http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-MINIMALPAIR.html http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsANaturalClass.htm http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/3039/?spage=&letter =http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling003.html http://www.how-to-study.com/metaphors.htm http://www.linguarama.com/ps/295-6.htm http://www.ilc.cnr.it/EAGLES96/synlex/node62.html http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Thematic-role http://elies.rediris.es/elies11/cap5111.htm

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/english/homonyms/ http://everything2.com/title/semantics http://www.unc.edu/~gerfen/Ling30Sp2002/pragmatics.htm http://www.tlumaczenia-angielski.info/linguistics/pragmatics.htm http://everything2.com/title/maxim+of+conversation http://www.unc.edu/~jlsmith/ling30a/outlines/0303.html http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/pragmatics.htm#5 http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/spchacts.html http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/11disc/deixis.html http://faculty.uca.edu/lburley/deixis.htm http://www.rit.edu/cla/philosophy/quine/analytic_synthetic.html

http://www.ling.gu.se/~biljana/st1-97/pragmalect3.html


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Recommended websites

MORPHOLOGY:http://www.ling.udel.edu/arena/morphology.html http://www.ling.udel.edu/idsardi/101/notes/morphology.html

http://www.ielanguages.com/linguist.html (part 2)

SYNTAX:http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/partsp.html http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/rvpartsp.html http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/StudyZone/330/grammar/parts.htm http://eslus.com/LESSONS/GRAMMAR/POS/pos.htm http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/objects.htm http://faculty.washington.edu/wassink/LING200/lec

linguistics: the scientific study of language

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