1. ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE 4 SEPT 09, 2013 – DAY 6 Brain & Language LING 4110-4890-5110-7960 NSCI 4110-4891-6110 Harry Howard Tulane University

2. Course organization The syllabus, these slides and my recordings are available at http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/.http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/ If you want to learn more about EEG and neurolinguistics, you are welcome to participate in my lab. This is also a good way to get started on an honor's thesis. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 2

3. Review The quiz was the review. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 3

4. ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE Ingram §2: Semantics 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 4

5. Thematic roles What is a thematic role? Some examples John gave Mary a tomato. John gave a tomato to Mary. Mary hates tomatoes. A brilliant idea occurred to Mary. Are thematic roles marked in any way in English? preposition postposition case 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 5

6. Specificity, reference, and deixis Articles indefinite a/some: a cat, some cats, some salt usually for first mention of the thing definite the: the cat, the cats, the salt, the sun usually for all following mentions & things that are ‘mentioned’ (known) from context or common knowledge Specificity I am looking for a secretary who speaks Mandarin. … if I can find one. > indefinite non-specific … Her name is Mary. > indefinite specific I am looking for the tallest man in the world. … if I can find him. > definite non-specific … His name is John. > definite specific 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 6

7. Reference Examples John scratched himself. John scratched him. John scratched John. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 7

8. Time reference What is tense? Tense places events on a time line. How many places are there on a time line? past < present < future What is aspect? Aspect describes the phases of an event: start, middle, finish I am talking. What is modality? Modality describes the likelihood of an event: possible (can, may, might, should) necessary (must, will, shall) 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 8

9. Assertion/presupposition What is assertion/presupposition? 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 9

10. ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE Ingram §2: left-overs 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 10

11. What are the parts of speech/syntactic categories? Major/content categories noun verb adjective adverb preposition/postposition? Minor/functional categories determiner: article, quantifier, demonstrative pronoun negation conjunction: coordinating, subordinating auxiliary verb? Interjection 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 11

12. Words group to together to form phrases What goes before ‘kissed John’ below? She kissed John. Mary kissed John. That girl kissed John. The tall girl kissed John. The girl over there kissed John. A girl that you don’t know kissed John. Answer A word that is ‘nouny’, or a group of words that contain a noun. Notice: it does not matter which one. We want a way to generalize over all of these possibilities, and the infinite number of alternatives that we can think up. Let’s do this by calling it a noun phrase or NP. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 12

13. Restatement of subject data as NP An NP goes before ‘kissed John’ below [ NP She] kissed John. [ NP Mary] kissed John. [ NP That girl] kissed John. [ NP The tall girl] kissed John. [ NP The girl over there] kissed John. [ NP A girl that you don’t know] kissed John. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 13

14. Words to phrases 2 What goes after ‘John kissed’ below? John kissed her. John kissed Mary. John kissed that girl. John kissed the tall girl. John kissed the girl over there. John kissed a girl that you don’t know. Answer The same ‘nouny’ thing as before. So let’s also call it a NP. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 14

15. Restatement of object data as NP An NP goes after ‘John kissed’: John kissed [ NP her]. John kissed [ NP Mary]. John kissed [ NP that girl]. John kissed [ NP the tall girl]. John kissed [ NP the girl over there]. John kissed [ NP a girl that you don’t know]. Our sentence now looks like this: NP kissed NP. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 15

16. NPs get around English treats NPs as units, in the sense that they can appear in different parts of a sentence: a. Which girl kissed John? ~ Which girl did John kiss __? b. THAT girl kissed John. ~ THAT girl, John kissed __. c. Not even Mary kissed John. ~ Not even Mary did John kiss __. d. That girl is who kissed John. ~ That girl is who John kissed __. e. Who kissed John is that girl. ~ Who John kissed __ is that girl. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 16

17. More phrases But it seems to be that ‘kissed NP’ is a unit, too: 1. Kiss Mary, I would never do. 2. *Kiss, I would never do Mary. 3. What John did was kiss Mary. 4. *What John did Mary was kiss. 5. What did John do? –– Kiss Mary. 6. *What did John do Mary? –– Kiss. 7. John said he would kiss Mary, and he did so. 8. #John said he would kiss, and he did Mary. Let’s call this new unit VP, so our sentence looks like this: NP [ VP kissed NP] By the way, how do you know which ones are bad? Because you are an expert in the grammar of your native language. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 17

18. A bigger unit The structure that we just saw covers a whole sentence, and it would be convenient to point this out in some way. So let us just make up a new unit, say ‘S’ for sentence: [ S NP [ VP kissed NP]] Many people find it hard to keep up with all the labels and brackets, though, so linguists came up with an alternative, the tree structure: 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 18 S NPVP kissedNP

19. Compositionality Compare these next two sentences: 1. Mary kicked the mule. 2. Mary kicked the bucket. #2 has two readings a. Mary applied force to the bucket with her foot. b. Mary died. In the (a) reading, the sentence means what the sum of its words mean; in the (b) reading, it means something special, not predictable from the individual words. This happens in morphology, too: a. the past tense of depart: departed b. the past tense of go: *goed, went We call the (a) readings compositional, while the (b) readings are non-compositional or lexical. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 19

20. NEXT TIME Ingram §3: Neuroanatomy of language ☞ Go over questions at end of chapter. 09/09/13Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 20