Al Majma,ah Community College

Al Majma,ah Community College
King Saud University Al Majma,ah Community College Dr. Mohanad Abu Sabha

Course Title: Linguistics 1 Course Number: Eng 320 Credit Hours:3
Course Information Course Title: Linguistics 1 Course Number: Eng 320 Credit Hours:3 Title: The Study of Language Author: George Yule And Edition:1985,Gambridge University Press Textbook

Course Schedule week Topics 1 The Origins of language 2
The Development of Writing 3 The Properties of language 4 Primate Use of Language 5 The Sounds of Language 6 The Sound patterns OF Language 7-8 Exam 1, What is phonology

9 Word And Word-formation procsses 10 Morphology 11-12 Phrases and Sentences Grammar 13-14 Semantics 15 Syntax

week1 The Origins of language

The Origins of Language
The Study of Language: Language: is primarily a means of communicating thoughts from one person to another. The Origins of Language While it is sure is that - unsurprisingly - spoken language developed long before written language, no-one knows for certain how language originated. There are, however, lots of speculations about the origin of human language. The Divine Source The Natural Sounds Source The Oral-Gesture Source Physiological Adaptation Speech and Writing Links

The Natural Sounds Source
The Divine Source According to one view God created Adam and " whatsoever Adam called every living creature , that was the name thereof من ذلك " .In most religions there appears to be a divine source that provides humans with language. In attempts to rediscover this original, However it seems that children with no access to human speech simply grow up with no language at all (see Chapter 14). NO SPEECH = NO LANGUAGE. The Natural Sounds Source Another speculation on the origin of language is that the first words were imitations of natural sounds. It is true that there are onomatopoeic words in every language, i.e. words that echo natural sounds, for example: CUCKOO, SPLASH, BANG قرع, RATTLE خشخشة, BUZZ أزيز, etc. Another idea is that the original sounds of language came from cries of emotion, i.e. pain, anger and joy, for example: OUCH! One another is the "yo-heave-ho theory" places the development of human language in a social context and states that language originated in the need to coordinate physical effort.

The Oral-Gesture Source إيماء
Many of our physical gestures, using body hands and face, are means of nonverbal communication and are used by modern humans, even with their developed linguistic skills. The "oral-gesture theory" proposes an extremely specific connection between physical and oral gesture involving a "specialized pantomime فن التمثيل الإيمائى of the tongue and lips" (Sir Richard Page, 1930).

Physiological Adaptation
Some of the physical aspects of humans that make the production of speech possible or easier are not shared with other creatures: Human teeth are upright and roughly even in height. Human lips have an intricate muscle interlacing. The human mouth is relatively small, can be opened and closed rapidly and contains a very flexible tongue. The human larynx حنجرة (or 'voice box') is special as well as the pharynx above the vocal cords can act as a resonator for any sounds produced. The human brain is lateralized and has specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. The functions that are analytic, such as tool-using and language, are largely confined to the left hemisphere of the brain for most humans. All languages require the organizing and combining of sounds or signs in specific constructions.

Speech and Writing Many of the speculations on the origin of language deal with the question of how humans started to interact with each other. However there are two major functions of language use: The interaction function has to do with how humans use language to interact with each other socially or emotionally. The transactional function has to do with communicating knowledge, skills and information. This transactional function will have developed, in part, for the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. And while there are cultures that rely mainly on their oral tradition, in many cases, as speech by its nature is transient عابر, زائل, the desire for a more permanent record must have developed:

week2 The Development of Writing

The Development of Writing
In comparison to spoken language, writing is relatively new - it was invented for the first time by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia in about 3200 BCE. Indians of Mexico invented it independently around 600 BCE, and the rise of Egyptian and Chinese systems may have been independent as well. Writing was certainly a great boon هبةto memetic spread, greatly increasing the fidelityالدقة and the fecundityمبدع of the memes that took advantage of it. These issues have already been analyzed in Memetics and Society. In this section we will examine writing systems and how they might have developed

The term "meme" (IPA: [miːm], not "mem"), coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural information that can be transmitted from one mind to another. Dawkins said, Examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. A meme propagatesينشر itself as a unit of cultural evolution analogous in many ways to the gene (the unit of genetic information). Often memes propagate as more-or-less integrated cooperative sets or groups, referred to as memeplexes or meme-complexes

Writing and Memetic Selection
The development of language as an adaptation for memes, not genes, is still a speculativeتفكري proposal. However, it is certain that writing is a purely memetic adaptation - there are no genes "for" writing proficiency (though there are some that impair يتلفthis ability). Writing, of course, is a vast improvement upon speech in terms of memetic fecundity and fidelity. Writing a meme down greatly increases its likelihood of being read by potential adherentsالتحام, and the very fact of being written may encourage people to adopt certain memes, as in the cases in which people insist that something is true because they read it in the paper. Writing also improves on memetic fidelity by liberating memes from fallibleعرضة للخطأ human memory; memes that are written down are much less vulnerable to confusions or elaborations in retelling, and therefore have a much lower mutationتغير أساسى rate.

Writing probably actually developed through memetic competition, in which slightly different systems competed and those that were most successful were adopted. Writing probably began as an accounting system of marks on clayطين tablets or other media. As such, it was probably not very standardized; each merchant or accountant could in theory have his own slightly different system of marking his tablets. Major conventions such as direction and orientation of markings may have been established in most languages due primarily to historical contingencyاحتمال, but the specifics of structuring the marks probably came about via memetic selection.

Each person who used the marks used them in a slightly different way; some ways were easier to remember, easier to write, or easier to read than others, and so these memes got copied, Eventually, this process produced better and better writing systems.

Types of Writing There are three basic forms of writing systems: logographic systems, which use symbols to represent whole words; syllabary systems, which use symbols to represent syllables; and alphabetic systems, which use symbols to represent units of sound. Logographic systems are the most intuitive بديهيfrom the perspective وجهة نضر of a society on the cusp نقطة التقاءof developing writing, and thus they tended to be the first to arise. They also are most logical next step from the marking system used by merchants and accountants. (Incidentally, the fact that Chinese is a logographic system is one piece of evidence for its independent invention .

Logographic systems, while being highly intuitive at first, quickly become extremely cumbersomeمتعب . They are difficult to learn and give relatively few pronunciation cuesشائكة- صعبة. Moreover, they require the invention of a new syllable every time a new word is needed, and they make compound words and complicated syntax much more difficult to write. Finally, the complicated pictorial symbols must be rendered almost perfectly in order to be legible, which makes writing a time- and energy-consuming process.

The second system, the syllabary, is much rarer, since it is an intuitive system only for a few languages. It is used in one variant of Japanese and was developed by an extremely intelligent Cherokee, Sequoyah, for use in writing and recording his native language. His system, based very loosely on English (at most he borrowed a few forms), became so successful that the formerly illiterate Cherokee tribe began publishing newspapers and books in their own language.

The third system of writing, the alphabetic system, is the most difficult to invent and the easiest to use. Many linguists believe it was invented only once, by the Phoenicians, and then spread or adapted to other languages. The system seems counterintuitive at first, since its most basic units do not correspond to anything meaningful in speech, but rather to an isolated sound. However, the system uses the power of infinite combination to achieve its success; whereas Chinese characters might take years to learn, the standard Roman alphabet often takes only a few months for children to memorize. Moreover, when each letter represents a certain sound, pronunciation is more easily inferred from the structure of a word (though English pronunciation sometimes leaves speakers confused). Finally, markers such as umlauts serve to increase the power of a system by more carefully delineating the pronunciation of certain letters.

In general, when logographic, syllabary , and alphabetic systems compete, the alphabetic system will tend to dominate because it can express the most thoughts most efficiently. Languages such as Japanese and Chinese will probably eventually be outcompeted because English - or another language based on an alphabet, most likely the Roman one - is so much easier to use. (This is not to say that English is easy, only that the alphabetic system is most efficient.)

Spelling and Writing One of the pitfalls of an alphabetic system is the proper spelling of each word. Regional variations in pronunciation affect how different speakers try to render their spoken words into writing. Consequently, speakers of the same language may find it impossible to communicate via writing because of differences in spelling.

The solution to this problem, of course, is to standardize spelling whenever possible. This is another example of the influences of memes: those spellings that are easiest to remember are most likely to become standard. Of course, plenty of modern English spelling is due primarily to now-obsolete historical facts, but these spellings were most likely quite logical to the English-speakers that originally standardized spelling. Moreover, sometimes illogical or difficult-to-remember spellings (and grammatical rules) are retained for other memetic reasons: they may confer prestige on those who observe them, serve as a mark of education, or indicate a formal tone (compare through and thru).

Early "creative spelling" in English has given way to standardized spellings for the vast majority of words, recorded in dictionaries and, more recently, in computerized spell-checkers. Though some variation in spelling remains, this primarily reflects distinct dialects, rather than multiple accepted spellings in a single dialect. For example, American and British English vary systematically in the spellings of certain words (American color and British colour) and suffixes (American -ize and British -ise).

week3 The Properties of language

What properties differentiate human language from all other forms of signaling and what properties make it a unique type of communication system? There have been a number of attempts to determine the defining properties of human language and different lists of features can be found. The following is a slightly modified list of features proposed by the linguist Charles Hockett: Arbitrariness. It is generally the case that there is no 'natural' connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. For the majority of animal signals, however, there appears to be a clear connection between the conveyed message and the signal used to convey it.

Arbitrariness of the symbols
Arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean "nothing". That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means "hope". 2. Productivity. This is the ability to produce and understand any number of messages that have never been expressed before and that may express novel ideas. In all animal communication systems, the number of signals is fixed. ( closed communication systems).

3. Cultural Transmission
3. Cultural Transmission. The process whereby language is passed on from one generation to the next. While it is clear that humans are born with an innate predisposition الميل to acquire language, it is clear that they are not born with the ability to produce utterances in a specific language, such as English. The general pattern of animal communication is that the signals used are instinctive and not learned.

4. Discreteness. متميز, منفصل This is the property of having complex messages that are built up out of smaller parts 5. Displacement. تنحية و إزاحة This refers to the ability to communicate about things that are not present in space or time. Animal communication is almost exclusively designed for a particular moment, here and now. It cannot effectively be used to related events, which are far removed in time and place. Human language allows the users of language to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment.

5 . Duality . ازدواجية Language organized at two levels . This property is called duality , or double articulation . 1. A Mode of Communication (vocal-auditory, visual, tactile or even chemical) 2. Semanticity. The signals in any communication system have meaning.

Study Questions: 1. What is the property, which relates to the fact that a language must be acquired or learned by each new generation? 2. Can you briefly explain what the term "arbitrariness" means as it is used to describe a property of human language? 3. Which term is used to describe the ability of human language-users to discuss topics, which are remote in space and time?

3. Pragmatic function. واقعي All systems of communication serve some useful purpose, from helping the species to stay alive to influencing others' behavior. 4. Interchangeability. قابل للتبادل The ability of individuals to both send and receive messages.

4. What is the term used to describe the fact that, in a language, we can have different meanings for the three words "tack", "act" and "cat", yet, in each case, use the same basic set of sounds? 5. A distinction is made between 'communicative' and 'informative' signals. No mention is made of the phenomenon known as 'body language'. Would 'body language', or other aspects of non-verbal signaling, be considered 'communicative' or 'informative'?

6. Hockett (1963) proposed that 'prevarication' could be treated as a property of language. In discussing this property, he pointed out that "linguistic messages can be false" and "lying seems extremely rare among animals". Can you give reasons for or against including prevarication (either deception or misinforming) among the properties of human language?

week4 Primate Use of Language

Primate Use of Language Created by Lauren Kosseff
Research concerning the ability of primates to acquire language has profound implications for the understanding of the evolution of the human species. The acquisition of language in primates may shed light on the development of language in early humans. In this sense, research of primate language and primate tool use offer similar insight into our early ancestors أسلافِنا الأوائِلِ.

Many people believe that language is a unique capacity of humans
Many people believe that language is a unique capacity of humans. Doubters of the ability of primates to use language include renowned M.I.T. linguist Noam Chomsky and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. Chomsky's Universal Grammar theory clearly defines language as a skill limited to humans, the sole possessors of the cognitive hardware which makes language possible. الأصحاب الوحيدون للأجهزةِ الإدراكيةِ الذي يَجْعلونَ اللغةَ محتملةَ Chomsky makes an analogy to flying in order to illustrate his position on primate language: "Humans can fly about 30 feet-that's what they do in the Olympics. Is that flying?

The question is totally meaningless
The question is totally meaningless." Chomsky and his followers theorize that the المتطلبات العصبية للغةneural requirements for language developed in humans after the evolutionary split between humans and primates. They base their argument on the ease with which children acquire language in comparison to the difficulty exhibited by primates. To Chomsky and his followers, this shows the innate propensity for language in children which is not present in primates.

. Pinker posits the argument that primates can be trained to do incredible things, however, these trained behaviors do not signify language ability. He believes that the primates simply learn to press certain buttons in order to receive rewards. Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a researcher who strongly believes in the ability of primates to use language. One of her most impressive observations involved a bonobo chimpanzee named Kanzi. Savage-Rumbaugh tried to no avail بلا جدواto train Kanzi's adoptive mother to use a keyboard of symbols.

The researchers were surprised to find that Kanzi had been eavesdroppingيتسنط on his mother's lessons and had acquired a substantial vocabulary. From then on, Kanzi was not given structured training like his mother, but was taught while walking through the forest with his trainers. By the age of 6, Kanzi had acquired a vocabulary of 200 words and was able to construct sentences by combining words with gestures or with other words. Kanzi's most notable accomplishment was captured on videotape: he was told, "Give the dog a shot," and he proceeded to inject his stuffed dog with a syringe.

Savage-Rumbaugh argues that Kanzi's language was initially dependent upon contextual cues, but that once he mastered a substantial vocabulary, he could respond accurately to 70% of novel commands from a concealed speaker. Critics say that Kanzi's accomplishments are not proof of language ability in primates because the crucial element in language ability is production, not comprehension. . يَقُولُ النقّادَ بأنّ إنجازاتَ كانزي لَيستْ برهانَ قدرةِ اللغةِ في قرودِ لأن العنصرَ الحاسمَ في قدرةِ اللغةِ إنتاجُ، لَيسوا فهماً.

Observation of the vervet species of monkeys in the wild offers support for the ability of primates to use language. The vervet monkeys have demonstrated the most advanced primate system of communication in their natural environment. The sounds which the vervets produce as a means of communication are instinctive and not learned.

Sign Language Sign language has been chosen as the superior medium in which to conduct language instruction for primates because they are unable to vocalize language. Some researchers hold the belief that primates are simply not intelligent enough to speak. This theory has lost credence as further research with apes has demonstrated their tremendous intellectual capacities in other areas .

Another possible explanation of the inability of primates to acquire verbal language, posited by Robert Yerkes, is that Primates are not inclined ميال towards imitation of sounds and therefore cannot learn verbal language. A final theory suggests that the vocal cords of primates are not capable of supporting the production of language.

Washoe Washoe is a chimpanzee who was taught to sign by her caretakers, Allen and Beatrice Gardner. She was raised in a friendly environment in which she learned sign language both through imitation and instrumental learning. Her language acquisition الاستملاكwas notable in several respects. Washoe was able to transfer signs to a new referent without specific instruction. For example, she learned the word "more" in relation to tickling but was spontaneously able to apply the term to another referent. Additionally significant was Washoe's use of signs in combinations after learning only about 8 or 10 signs.

This spontaneous combination of signs seems similar to the ability of human children to connect words in sentences to which they have never specifically been exposed. Washoe has demonstrated reliable use of 240 signs. A sign is deemed reliable when its use has been recorded by three separate observers on 15 consecutive days. Her trainers have observed that Washoe mostly uses her signs to discipline her children and explain her concern about them.

...and Loulis Washoe adopted an infant chimp named Loulis. No human sign language was used in Loulis' presence during the first 5 years of her life. Remarkably, Loulis nonetheless acquired more than 50 signs by watching the other chimps. Bob Ingersoll, who studied Washoe and Loulis, observed that there was little active teaching on the part of the adult chimps. Loulis' language acquisition thus reflects the manner in which human children acquire language.

The Gardners concluded from Loulis' acquisition of language through observation of the other chimps that: "once introduced, sign language is robust and self-reporting, unlike the systems that depend on special apparatuses such as the Rumbaugh keyboards or the Premack plastic tokens."

Nim Herb Terrace doubted that primate language is any sort of equivalent of human language. He did not believe that the findings of language acquisition and use in Washoe, Loulis, and other primates were truly symbolic of language acquisition. Instead, he theorized that there were simpler explanations for the behaviors which had been interpreted as language use by primates (Morgan's Canon!). Terrace posited that the primates were performing rote memorization tasks similar to pigeons who are taught to peck at colors in specific orders.

. Terrace also thought that primates only signed in order to please their trainers, not for the personal gratification of using the signs. Terrace also says that a primate might learn to connect a sign with food and reproduce the sign through simple conditioning, just as Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. Therefore, Terrace decided to conduct his own study of primate language use. He raised a chimpanzee, Nim, as a human child and taught him sign language in the manner in which Washoe had been taught. Nim did in fact demonstrate some important aspects of language use.

He was observed using the signs for "angry" and "bite" to express his displeasure, an important observation in that it demonstrates the use of arbitrary symbols to represent physical actions. Despite his acquisition and use of numerous signs, Terrace decided that Nim was incapable of combining words to create novel ideas. The only occasions in which Nim produced combinations of signs were imitations of signs previously produced by his trainers.

Central Washington University's Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute
The CHCI at Central Washington University is home to a family of 5 chimps who, according to their trainers, have mastered the use of sign language and implement it in conversations with each other and their trainers. The chimps at CHCI use the signs alone and in combination with other signs. One of the longest recorded sentences produced by a chimp contained 7 signs! Chimps generally utilize( use ) their signs in discussing aspects of family life. The trainers have observed that young males frequently sign to talk about games, such as tickle and chase. دغدغةً ومطاردةَ

An important finding about primate language use at the CHCI is that the chimps use signs to refer to natural language categories. For example, the chimps use one sign signifying "dog" to refer to all dogs. This category generalization is similar to that of children as they first begin learning to speak. Chimpanzees have also shown that they are able to create novel signs by combining signs to convey a metaphoricallyمجازي different concept. For example, one chimp at the CHCI was recorded describing a watermelon as "drink fruit." Seems like a pretty accurate description!

The CHCI is considering a couple of possible continuations of their research, provided that funding is available. One possible area of exploration is the ability of chimps to use signs to represent spatial relationships and their capacity for taking on the position of another person (or chimp). Additionally, the CHCI is considering studying the ability of chimps to recognize break-downs in conversations and to repair them, their use grammatical markers, and their ability to understand and use temporal signs

The CHCI also hopes to expand their research to include the study of how to apply the teaching of language to chimps to assisting autistic children, who have difficulty learning language. They also hope that their research will be helpful in studying the teacher-student relationship in humans.

The Orang Utan Language Project
At the National Zoo, Orang utans are learning to communicate in a language designed especially for them. Their training began with flash cards and has advanced to the use of computers with touch screens. Both nouns and verbs are being taught with the goal of eventually testing the Orang utans ability to develop syntactically accurate sentences. The Orang utan Language Project operates under the idea that the orang utans will learn the language if they wish to use it to communicate with their trainers and to control their environment. As such, no coercion is used in teaching the language

week5-6 The Sounds of Language,

The Sounds of Language (ch.5)
The Sounds of Language (ch.5) The organs of speech can be divided into the following three groups : 1-The respiratory system :This comprises the lungs , the muscles of the chest and the wind pipe 2- The phonatory system : this comprises the larynx . 3- The articulatory system : this comprises the nose , teeth , tongue , roof of the mouth and the lips .

Epiglottis , Vocal cords and , Glottis

The phonatory system : The Larynx : it is commonly called the Adam's apple , situated at the top of the wind pip .The air from the lungs has to come out through the windpipe and the larynx. In the larynx are situated a pair of lip-like structures. These are called the vocal cords and these are placed horizontally from _ front to back. They are attached in front and can be separated at the back. The opening between the cords is called the glottis The vocal cords can be opened and closed (because they can be separated at the back) and when the two cords come very close to each other, the glottis will be shut completely. In fact when we swallow food or water, the vocal cords shut the glottis and thus prevent the food or water from entering the windpipe.

When we breathe in and out, the vocal cords are drawn wide apart and 'thus the glottis is open. The-air enters the lungs or gets out of the lungs through the wide open glottis-: When we produce some speech sounds, the vocal cords are wide apart and the glottis is open. Such sounds produced with a wide – open glottis are called voiceless sounds or breathed sounds (the latter term is used because this is the position of the glottis for breathing). The first sounds in the English words peel, ten, keen, chin , fine, thin, seen, shine and hat are voiceless sounds .

( During the production of certain speech sounds, the vocal cords are loosely held together and the pressure of the air from the lungs makes them open and close rapidly. This is called the vibration of the vocal cords and the sounds produced when the vocal cords vibrate are called voiced sounds. All the sounds in the English words bead, deed, girl, judge, vine, then ,zoo, measure, need, wing, red, yard and well are voiced sounds. ) The vibration of the vocal cords is important for another factor, too. The rate at which the vocal cords vibrate is called the frequency

The production of speech sounds (P. 40-41)
Articulators above the larynx All the sounds we make when we speak are the result of muscles contracting. The muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the flow of air that is needed for almost all speech sounds; muscles in the larynx produce many different modifications in the flow of air from the chest to the mouth. After passing through the larynx, the air goes through what we call the vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils. Here the air from the lungs escapes into the atmosphere. We have a large and complex set of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the vocal tract, and in order to learn how the sounds of speech are produced it is necessary to become familiar with the different parts of the vocal tract. These different parts are called articulators, and the study of them is called articulatory phonetics.

Fig. 1 is a diagram that is used frequently in the study of phonetics
Fig. 1 is a diagram that is used frequently in the study of phonetics. It represents the human head, seen from the side, displayed as though it had been cut in half. You will need to look at it carefully as the articulators are described, and you will often find it useful to have a mirror and a good light placed so that you can look at the inside of your mouth.

Fig. 1 The articulators i) The pharynx is a tube which begins just above the larynx. It is about 7 cm long in women and about 8 cm in men, and at its top end it is divided into two, one part being the back of the mouth and the other being the beginning of the way through the nasal cavity. If you look in your mirror with your mouth open, you can see the back of the pharynx. ii) The velum or soft palate is seen in the diagram in a position that allows air to pass through the nose and through the mouth. Yours is probably in that position now, but often in speech it is raised so that air cannot escape through the nose. The other important thing about the velum is that it is one of the articulators that

can be touched by the tongue
can be touched by the tongue. When we make the sounds  and  the tongue is in contact with the lower side of the velum, and we call these velar consonants. iii) The hard palate is often called the "roof of the mouth". You can feel its smooth curved surface with your tongue. iv) The alveolar ridge is between the top front teeth and the hard palate. You can feel its shape with your tongue. Its surface is really much rougher than it feels, and is covered with little ridges. You can only see these if you have a mirror small enough to go inside your mouth (such as those used by dentists). Sounds made with the tongue touching here (such as  and  ) are called alveolar

v) The tongue is, of course, a very important articulator and it can be moved into many different places and different shapes. It is usual to divide the tongue into different parts, though there are no clear dividing lines within the tongue. Fig. 2 shows the tongue on a larger scale with these parts shown: tip, blade, front, back and root. (This use of the word "front" often seems rather strange at first.) Fig. 2 Sub-divisions of the tongue

vi) The teeth (upper and lower) are usually shown in diagrams like Fig
vi) The teeth (upper and lower) are usually shown in diagrams like Fig. 1 only at the front of the mouth, immediately behind the lips. This is for the sake of a simple diagram, and you should remember that most speakers have teeth to the sides of their mouths, back almost to the soft palate. The tongue is in contact with the upper side teeth for many speech sounds. Sounds made with the tongue touching the front teeth are called dental. vii) The lips are important in speech. They can be pressed together (when we produce the sounds  ,  ), brought into contact with the teeth (as in  , ), or rounded to produce the lip-shape for vowels like .

Sounds in which the lips are in contact with each other are called bilabial, while those with lip-to-teeth contact are called labiodental. The seven articulators described above are the main ones used in speech, but there are three other things to remember. Firstly, the larynx could also be described as an articulator - a very complex and independent one . Secondly, the jaws are sometimes called articulators; certainly we move the lower jaw a lot in speaking. But the jaws are not articulators in the same way as the others, because they cannot themselves make contact with other articulators. Finally, although there is practically nothing that we can do with the nose and the nasal cavity, they are a very important part of our equipment for making sounds (what is sometimes called our vocal apparatus), particularly nasal consonants such as  ,  . Again, we cannot really describe the nose and the nasal cavity as articulators in the same sense as (i) to (vii) above.

Phonetics: The general study of the characteristics of speech sounds is called phonetics. Our basic interest will be in articulatory phonetics, which is the study of how speech sounds are made, or articulated. Articulation: voiced and voiceless Place of articulation (P.41-45) The active articulator usually moves in order to make the constriction. The passive articulator usually just sits there and gets approached.

A sound's place of articulation is usually named by using the Latin ajective for the active articulator (ending with an "o") followed by the Latin adjective for the passive articulator. For example, a sound where the tongue tip (the "apex") approaches or touches the upper teeth is called an "apico-dental". Most of the common combinations of active and passive articulator have abbreviated names (usually leaving out the active half).

bilabial labio-dental
These are the abbreviated names for the places of articulation used in English: bilabial The articulators are the two lips. (We could say that the lower lip is the active articulator and the upper lip the passive articulator, though the upper lip usually moves too, at least a little.) English bilabial sounds include [p], [b], and [m]. labio-dental The lower lip is the active articulator and the upper teeth are the passive articulator. English labio-dental sounds include [f] and [v].

dental Dental sounds involve the upper teeth as the passive articulator. The active articulator may be either the tongue tip or (usually) the tongue blade -- diacritic symbols can be used if it matters which. Extreme lamino-dental sounds are often called interdental. English interdental sounds include [ ] and [ ]. This , thank

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

Post alveolar Post alveolar sounds involve the area just behind the alveolar ridge as the passive articulator. The active articulator may be either the tongue tip or (usually) the tongue blade -- diacritic symbols can be used if it matters which. English postalveolars include [ ] and [ ]. Ch , sh , Linguists have traditionally used very inconsistent terminology in referring to the post alveolar POA.

Some of the terms you may encounter for it include:
Palato -alveolar, alveo-palatal, alveolo-palatal, and even (especially among English-speakers) palatal. Many insist that palato-alveolar and alveo (lo)-palatal are two different things -- though they don't agree which is which. "Post alveolar ", the official term used by the International Phonetic Association, is unambiguous, not to mention easier to spell.

]. For most North Americans, the tongue tip is curled back in [ ]
retroflex In retroflex sounds, the tongue tip is curled up and back. Retro flexes can be classed as apico-post alveolar , though not all apico –post alveolars need to be curled backward enough to count as retroflex. The closest sound to a retroflex that English has is [ ]. For most North Americans, the tongue tip is curled back in [ ] , though not as much as it is in languages that have true retro flexes . Many other North Americans use what is called a "bunched r" -- instead of curling their tongues back, they bunch the front up and push it forward to form an approximant behind the alveolar ridge. r ,

palatal The active articulator is the tongue body and the passive articulator is the hard palate. The English glide [j] is a palatal. Velar The active articulator is the tongue body and the passive articulator is the soft palate. English velars include [k], [g], and [ ].

glottal This isn't strictly a place of articulation, but they had to put it in the chart somewhere. Glottal sounds are made in the larynx. For the glottal stop, the vocal cords close momentarily and cut off all airflow through the vocal tract. English uses the glottal stop in the interjection uh-uh (meaning 'no'). In [h], the vocal cords are open, but close enough together that air passing between them creates friction noise.

Note: [w] is often called a "labio-velar". This doesn't follow the POA naming convention -- it does not mean that the active articulator is the lower lip and you try to touch your soft palate with it! A [w] is made up of two different approximants: a bilabial approximant and a (dorso-)velar approximant pronounced simultaneously

Consonant parameters (continued)
Manners of articulation (P.45-52) Constriction degree Place of articulation refers to where the narrowing occurs -- which active articulator gets close to which passive articulator. Constriction degree refers to how close they get. The main constriction degrees are: *Complete closure and sudden release( plosive ) : the active articulator touches the passive articulator and completely cuts off the airflow through the mouth. Simultaneously there is a velic closure , that is the soft palate is raised , thereby shutting off the nasal passage of air . When the active articulator is suddenly remove from passive articulator , the air escapes with small explosive noise .

Sounds produced with complete closure and sudden release are called plosive : [p], [p], [t], [d] ,[k ] , [ g ] . *Complete closure and slow release : ( affricates ) If after blocking the oral and the nasal passages of air , the oral closure is removed slowly . Sounds produced with complete closure and slow release are called affricates Chin and jam

*Complete oral closure : ( nasal )
the active articulator touches the passive articulator and completely cuts off the airflow through the mouth .But the soft palate is lowered thereby opening the nasal passage of air .The lung air will escape through the nose freely . Sounds produced with complete oral closure are called Nasals . Sum , sun , sung

* Intermittent closure ( trill , rolled)
the soft palate is raised , thereby shutting off the nasal passage of air . the active articulator strikes against the passive articulator several times with the result that the air escapes between the active and the passive articulators Intermittently .

Sounds that are produced with a stricture of Intermittent closure are called trill or rolled .
red , ran * Just once and then quickly flaps forward . For some consonants the active articulator strikes against the passive articulator just once and then quickly flaps forward .Such consonants are called taps or flaps . Very

* Close approximation (fricative )
the active articulator is brought so closer to the passive articulator that there is a very narrow gap between them . the soft palate is raised , thereby shutting off the nasal passage of air . the result that the air escapes through the narrow space between the active and the passive articulators . Five , vine , thin , sip , zip , sheep and hat

Partial closure : The active and the passive articulators are in firm contact with each other . the soft palate is raised , thereby shutting off the nasal passage of air . if the sides of the tongue are lowered so that there is plenty of gap between the sides of the tongue and the upper molar teeth , the air will escape along the sides of the tongue without friction . Sounds produced with complete closure in the center of the vocal tract but with the air escaping along the sides of the tongue without any frication are called lateral .

The initial sound in the word love is lateral .
Open approximation : the soft palate is raised , thereby shutting off the nasal passage of air . If the active articulator is brought close to the passive articulator so that there is a wide gap between them , the air will escape through this gap without any frication . Sounds that are produced with a stricture of open approximation Are called frictionless continuants and semi –vowels

fricative: the active articulator doesn't touch the passive articulator, but gets close enough that the airflow through the opening becomes turbulent. English fricatives include [f], [ ], [z]. approximant: the active articulator approaches the passive articulator, but doesn't even get close enough for the airflow to become turbulent. English approximants include [j], [w], ] ] [ , and [l]. affricate: Affricates can be seen as a sequence of a stop and a fricative which have the same or similar places of articulation. They are transcribed using the symbols for the stop and the fricative. If one wants to emphasize the affricate as a "single" sound, a tie symbol can be used to join the stop and the fricative (sometimes the fricative is written as a superscript).

Notes: A stop cuts off airflow through the mouth. Airflow through the nose does not matter -- you can have both oral and nasal stops. Oral stops are often called plosives, including in the IPA chart. Nasal stops are usually just call ed nasals. Approximants that are apical or laminal are often called liquids (e.g., [ ], [l]). Approximants that correspond to vowels are often called glides (e.g., [j] corresponds to [i], [w] to [u]).

English has the affricates
]. ] and [d The stop and the fricative halves of these affricates are at the same place of articulation: the stop is in fact postalveolar rather than alveolar. We could be explicit about this and underline the [t] and [d] (in IPA, a minus sign under a symbol is a diacritic meaning "pronounced further back in the mouth"), but most phoneticians believe this difference in the place of articulation is so predictable that it doesn't have to be marked.

State of the glottis For now, we can simply use the terms "voiced" and "voiceless" to answer the question of what the vocal cords are doing: In voiced sounds, the vocal cords are vibrating. In voiceless sounds, the vocal cords are not vibrating. Ultimately, we will see there are different ways of being voiced or voiceless.

The vocal cords can do a number of things. They can:
be held so wide apart that the air makes no sound passing through them. (This is nice when you have to breathe 24 hours a day, but not as useful for speaking.) be held closer together, so that the air passing through them becomes turbulent. This quality of sound is called breathiness. It is what is happening in aspiration and in the sound [h]. be held together so that the air passing through them causes them to vibrate. This is called voicing. be held together so tightly that no air can pass through at all, as in a glottal stop.

(By varying their tension and position, the vocal cords can also produce many other effects like breathy voicing, creaky voicing, and falsetto.) What the vocal cords are doing is independent of what the higher parts of the vocal tract are doing. For any place of articulation and any degree of stricture, you can get two different sounds: voiced and voiceless. For example, [t] and [d] are formed identically in the mouth; the difference is that the vocal cords vibrate during a [d] but not during a [t]. (The obvious exception is the glottal place of articulation -- you can't vibrate your vocal cords while making a glottal stop.) In each cell of the IPA chart, the symbol for the voiceless sound is shown to the left and that for the voiced sound to the right. Some rows only have voiced symbols (e.g., nasals and approximants). You can write the corresponding voiceless sound using the voiceless diacritic (a circle under the voiced symbol).

Nasality The soft palate can be lowered, allowing air to flow out through the nose, or it can be raised to block nasal airflow. As was the case with the vocal cords, what the soft palate is doing is independent the other articulators. For almost any place of articulation, there are pairs of stops that differ only in whether the soft palate is raised, as in the oral stop [d], or lowered, as in the nasal stop [n].

Laterality When you form an [l], your tongue tip touches your alveolar ridge (or maybe your upper teeth) but it doesn't create a stop because one or both sides of the tongue are lowered so that air can flow out along the side. Sounds like this with airflow along the sides of the tongue are called lateral, all others are called central (though we usually just assume that

The side of the tongue can lower to different degrees
The side of the tongue can lower to different degrees. It can lower so little that the air passing through becomes turbulent (giving a lateral fricative like [ ]) ] or [ or it can lower enough for there to be no turbulence (a lateral approximant). The [l] of English is a lateral approximant.

Air stream mechanism Speech sounds need air to move. Most sounds (including all the sounds of English) are created by modifying a stream of air that is pushed outward from the lungs. But it's possible for the air to be set in motion in other ways. Sounds which use one of the other three most common airstream mechanisms are called ejectives, implosives, and clicks. We'll discuss these possibilities later in the course.

active articulator tongue body (dorsum) passive articulator
Describing consonant segments A consonant sound can be described completely by specifying each of the parameters for place and manner of articulation. For example, [k] has the following properties: active articulator tongue body (dorsum) passive articulator soft palate (velum) constriction degree stop state of glottis voiceless nasal no lateral airstream mechanism normal So [k] is a voiceless oral central dorso-velar stop.

week7-8 What is phonology? First Exam

What is phonology? Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages.
The phonological system of a language includes * an inventory of sounds and their features, and * rules which specify how sounds interact with each other. Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics. Here is an illustration that shows the place of phonology in an interacting hierarchy of levels in linguistics:

Comparison: Phonology and phonetics
Is the basis for phonological analysis. Is the basis for further work in morphology, syntax, discourse, and orthography design. Analyzes the production of all human speech sounds, regardless of language. Analyzes the sound patterns of a particular language by determining which phonetic sounds are significant, and explaining how these sounds are interpreted by the native speaker.

Models of phonology Different models of phonology contribute to our knowledge of phonological representations and processes: * In classical phonemics, phonemes and their possible combinations are central. * In standard generative phonology, distinctive features are central. A stream of speech is portrayed as linear sequence of discrete sound-segments. Each segment is composed of simultaneously occurring features

* In non-linear models of phonology, a stream of speech is represented as multidimensional, not simply as a linear sequence of sound segments. These non-linear models grew out of generative phonology: autosegmental phonology metrical phonology lexical phonology

What is a phoneme? A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language. Phonologists have differing views of the phoneme. Following are the two major views considered here: * In the American structuralist tradition, a phoneme is defined according to its allophones and environments. * In the generative tradition, a phoneme is defined as a set of distinctive features.

Here is a chart that compares phones and phonemes:
Comparison Here is a chart that compares phones and phonemes: Represented between slashes by convention. Represented between brackets by convention. A phone is … A phoneme is … One of many possible sounds in the languages of the world. A contrastive unit in the sound system of a particular language. The smallest identifiable unit found in a stream of speech. A minimal unit that serves to distinguish between meanings of words. Pronounced in a defined way. Pronounced in one or more ways, depending on the number of allophones. Example: [b], [j], [o] Example: /b/, /j/, /o/

Examples (English): Minimal pair
Here are examples of the phonemes /r/ and /l/ occurring in a minimal pair * rip lip The phones [r] and [l] contrast in identical environments and are considered to be separate phonemes. The phonemes /r/ and /l/ serve to distinguish the word rip from the word lip. Examples (English): Distinctive features /p/ /i/ -syllabic +consonantal -sonorant +anterior -coronal -voice -continuant -nasal+syllabic -consonantal +sonorant +high -low -back -round +ATR -nasal

What is an allophone? What is a phone? What is a minimal pair?
An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language. * [p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/. * [t] and [tH] are allophones of the phoneme /t/. What is a phone? A phone is an unanalyzed sound of a language. It is the smallest identifiable unit found in a stream of speech that is able to be transcribed with an IPA symbol. What is a minimal pair? A minimal pair is two words that differ in only one sound. Sounds which differ: /p/ and /b/ * [lQp] ‘lap’ * [lQb] ‘lab’

Compare: Morpheme-morph-allomorph and phoneme-phone-allophone
The relationship between a morpheme and its morphs and allomorphs is parallel to the relationship between a phoneme and its phones and allophones.

A morpheme is manifested as one or more morphs (surface forms) in different environments. These morphs are called allomorphs. A phoneme is manifested as one or more phones (phonetic sounds) in different environments. These phones are called allophones.

Syllables We have seen how each spoken language has a set of consonant and vowel categories that are used by its speakers and hearers to distinguish the words of the language. The consonants and vowels in turn are combined into larger units, syllables. Syllables are distinguished from one another in terms of the consonants and vowels that they consist of. But syllables can also be distinguished from one another in other ways, and some of these ways are very commonly used contrastively, that is, to distinguish words from each other.

We will look at some of these "suprasegmental" features of language in this section. Languages also differ in terms of how consonants and vowels can be combined into syllables, the "phonotactics" of the language, and we will also look at this property of languages in this section.

Phonotactics As we have seen, each spoken language has an "alphabet" of form categories — consonant and vowel phonemes — which are combined to form the syllables that make up words. But languages differ not only in the particular vowel and consonant phonemes they have. They also differ with respect to how the vowels and consonants may be combined to form syllables.

Let's start with simple English syllables consisting of a consonant followed by a vowel; I'll abbreviate this as "CV". First, can any consonant appear in the "C" position? Taking the vowel as the constant /o/, certainly all of the following are possible syllables in English: /po/, /bo/, /mo/, /vo/, /to/, /co/, /∫o/, /ko/, /lo/, /ro/, /wo/, /ho/. But what about /ηo/? A complete search of the English lexicon reveals that there are no English words that have syllables beginning with the phoneme /η/. Although other nasal consonants (/m/ and /n/) and other velar consonants (/k/ and /g/) can appear at the beginnings of syllables, English seems to constrain syllables to not begin with the phoneme /η/.

What about the vowels in a CV syllable
What about the vowels in a CV syllable? Let's be more specific and assume that the syllable is stressed and comes at the end of an English word. Keeping the consonant as the constant /b/, all of the following seem possible: /bi/, /be/, /bu/, /bo/, /b⊃/, /bay/, /baw/, /b⊃y/. (For speakers who do not make the distinction between /⊃/ and /α/, /bα/ would also be possible.) But what about the following: /bI/, /bε/,: /bI/, /bε/, /bæ/, /bU/, /b^/, /bα/ (for speakers who distinguish /α/ and /⊃/)? None of these syllables seems possible. Again there is apparently a sort of prohibition on the kinds of phonemes that can appear in English syllables. In this case, the most efficient way to state the prohibition is to say that English forbids lax vowels, other than /⊃/, from appearing at the ends of syllables (at least stressed syllables at the end of words). Note that /⊃/ presents a problem for the generalization; this is one of the ways in which this vowel does not quite fit into the lax/tense, short/long distinction.

Thus English has constraints on the structure of syllables
Thus English has constraints on the structure of syllables. Such constraints are referred to as phonotactics. It's beyond our goals to go into English phonotactics in detail, but let's investigate a bit further what the bounds are on English syllables. What about syllables with more than one consonant at the beginning? In general, clusters of consonants not separated by vowels are more difficult for speakers to produce than consonants that are separated by vowels.

This is because the articulators must move from one consonant position to another without opening up in between (because the opening would be realized as a vowel). And the difficulty of particular combinations varies considerably. Thus we should expect more constraints on what is possible in clusters than for single consonants. An examination of the English lexicon reveals that the following consonant clusters can appear at the beginnings of General American English syllables (my accent) if we count the semivowels /w/ and /y/ as consonants.

/by/, /py/, /my/, /fy/, /vy/, /ky/, /hy/
/tw/, /dw/, /kw/, /gw/ /by/, /py/, /my/, /fy/, /vy/, /ky/, /hy/ /pl/, /bl/, /fl/, /kl/, /gl/, /sl/, /∫l/ /pr/, /br/, /fr/, /θr/, /tr/, /dr/, /kr/, /gr/ /sp/, /st/, /sk/, /sm/, /sn/, /∫p/ /spl/, /spr/, /str/, /skl/, /skr/ We can see some patterns in what is possible. /s/ seems to be special. If we leave it out, we see that all of the clusters end in a sonorant consonant, /w/, /y/, /l/, or /r/. Clusters of three consonants must consist of /s/ followed by a voiceless stop followed by either /l/ or /r/. In fact, for this and other reasons, /l/ and /r/ are often treated as forming a category in their own right.

Co-articulation Coarticulation in phonetics refers to two
different phenomena: * the assimilation of the place of articulation of one speech sound to that of an adjacent speech sound. For example, while the sound /n/ of English normally has an alveolar place of articulation, in the word tenth it is pronounced with a dental place of articulation because the following sound, /θ/, is dental.

Assimilation (linguistics)
* Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphonic effect. Assimilation (linguistics) Assimilation is a regular and frequent sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. A common example of assimilation is vowels being 'nasalized' before nasal consonants as it is difficult to change the shape of the mouth sufficiently quickly.

If the phoneme changes to match the preceding phoneme, it is progressive assimilation (also left-to-right, perseveratory, or preservative assimilation). If the phoneme changes to match the following phoneme, it is regressive assimilation (also right-to-left or anticipatory assimilation). If there is a mutual influence between the two phonemes, it is reciprocal assimilation. In the latter case the two phonemes can fuse completely and give a birth to a different one. This is called a coalescence. The notion was identified by Sanskrit Grammarians as Sandhi or fusion.

The notion was identified by Sanskrit Grammarians as Sandhi or fusion.
Assimilation may result in the neighbouring segments becoming identical, yielding a geminate consonant; this is complete assimilation. In other cases, only some features of phonemes assimilate, e.g. voicing or place of articulation; this is partial assimilation. Tonal languages may exhibit various degrees of tone assimilation, while sign languages also exhibit assimilation when the characteristics of neighbouring phonemes may be mixed

English Complete assimilation:
The word assimilation itself (from Latin ad + simile) illegible (in + legible) suppose (sub + pose) Partial assimilation: voicing: the pronunciation of absurd as apsurd or abzurd devoicing: bats (bat + the plural morpheme s, which is underlyingly /z/) place of articulation: impossible (in + possible), incomplete (in which n represents the velar nasal)

week9 Word And Word-formation processes

Word - Formation Processes
One of the distinctive properties of human language that we have already discussed in the introductory chapter is creativity, by which we mean the ability of native speakers of a language to produce and understand new forms in their language. Even though creativity is most apparent when it comes to sentence formation, where new words are added to our mental. In this part of Chapter 3 we discuss the processes that speakers of a language use regularly (and unconsciously too) to create new words in their language

(1) Derivation الإشتقاق
The most productive process of word formation in a language is the use of derivational morphemes to form new words from already existing forms, as we discussed in the previous handout. So, for example, from arrange we can derive rearrange, from which we can still derive rearrangement. Can you think of other examples? Derivation is the formation of a new word or inflectable stem from another word or stem. It typically occurs by the addition of an affix . An affix is a bound morpheme that is joined before, after, or within a root or stem

* A suffix is an affix that is attached to the end of a root or stem
* A prefix is an affix that is joined before a root or stem.(un- , pre- , mis- ) e.g ) The prefix un- attaches to the front of the stem selfish to form the word unselfish * A suffix is an affix that is attached to the end of a root or stem (-ful , -less , -ism) . e.g) The past tense suffix -ed attaches to the end of the stem walk to form the past tense verb walked. * An infix is an affix that is inserted within a root. or stem . Philippines (Tagalog) The focus marker -um- is a infix which is added after the first consonant of the root · bili: root ‘buy’ · -um-: infix ‘AGT’ · bumili: word ‘bought’

(2) Coinage ابتكار Coinage is the invention of totally new words. The typical process of coinage usually involves the extension of a product a name from a specific reference to a more general one. For example, think of Kleenex, Xerox, and Kodak. These started as names of specific products, but now they are used as the generic names for different brands of these types of products.

(3) Conversion التحويل Conversion is the extension of the use of one word from its original grammatical category to another category as well. For example, the word must is a verb (e.g. 1 “You must attend classes regularly”), but it can also be used as a noun as in “Class attendance is a must”. Conversion from one category to another is very common in natural language morphology and it’s one way of enriching the lexicon of a language.

(4) Borrowing New words also enter a language through borrowing from other languages. English, for example, borrowed a lot of French words as a result of the Norman invasion in 1066, and that’s why the English lexicon has a Latinate flavor to it, even though English did not descend from Latin. Here are some examples of foreign words that found their way into English: (a) leak, yacht (from Dutch) (b) barbecue, cockroach (from Spanish) (c) piano, concerto (from Italian)

(5) Compounding New words are also created through the common process of compounding, i.e. combining two or more words together to form a new complex word. Here are some examples of compounding: (a) post + card → postcard (b) post + office → post office (c) book + case → bookcase We may also combine more than two words, e.g. mother-in-law, sergeant-at-arms.

(6) Acronyms المختصرات Acronyms are words created from the initial letters of several words. Typical examples are NATO, FBI, CIA, UN, UNICEF, FAQ, WYSIWYG, radar, laser

(7) Back-formation ) Back-formation
Back-formation of words results when a word is formed from another word by taking off what looks like a typical affix in the language. For example, one of the very productive derivational morphemes in English is –er, which may be added to a verb to create a noun meaning “a person who performs the action of the verb”, e.g. teacher, writer. Sometimes, however, the reverse happens. A noun enters the language first and then a verb is “back-formed” from it. This is the case with the verbs edit and televise

(8) Clipping القصاصة (9) Blending المَزْج
for example, which entered English as back-formations from editor and television. (8) Clipping القصاصة Another process of word-formation is clipping, which is the shortening of a longer word. Clipping in English gave rise to words such as fax from facsimile, gym from gymnasium, and lab from laboratory. (9) Blending المَزْج Blending is another way of combining two words to form a new word. The difference between blending and compounding, however, is that in blending only parts of the words, not the whole words, are combined. Here are some examples: (a) smoke + fog → smog (b) motor + hotel → motel

week10 Morphology

Morphemes Introduction
Morphemes are what make up words. Often, morphemes are thought of as words but that is not always true. Some single morphemes are words while other words have two or more morphemes within them. Morphemes are also thought of as syllables but this is incorrect. Many words have two or more syllables but only one morpheme. Banana, apple, papaya, and nanny are just a few examples. On the other hand, many words have two morphemes and only one syllable; examples include cats, runs, and barked.

Definitions morpheme: a combination of sounds that have a meaning. A morpheme does not necessarily have to be a word. Example: the word cats has two morphemes. Cat is a morpheme, and s is a morpheme. Every morpheme is either a base or an affix. An affix can be either a prefix or a suffix. Cat is the base morpheme, and s is a suffix. affix: a morpheme that comes at the beginning (prefix) or the ending (suffix) of a base morpheme. Note: An affix usually is a morpheme that cannot stand alone. Examples: -ful, -ly, -ity, -ness. A few exceptions are able, like, and less.

base: a morpheme that gives a word its meaning
base: a morpheme that gives a word its meaning. The base morpheme cat gives the word cats its meaning: a particular type of animal. prefix: an affix that comes before a base morpheme. The in in the word inspect is a prefix. suffix: an affix that comes after a base morpheme. The s in cats is a suffix. free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand alone as a word without another morpheme. It does not need anything attached to it to make a word. Cat is a free morpheme. bound morpheme: a sound or a combination of sounds that cannot stand alone as a word. The s in cats is a bound morpheme, and it does not have any meaning without the free morpheme cat.

inflectional morpheme: this morpheme can only be a suffix
inflectional morpheme: this morpheme can only be a suffix. The s in cats is an inflectional morpheme. An inflectional morpheme creates a change in the function of the word. Example: the d in invited indicates past tense. English has only seven inflectional morphemes: -s (plural) and -s (possessive) are noun inflections; -s ( 3rd-person singular), -ed ( past tense), -en (past participle), and -ing ( present participle) are verb inflections; -er (comparative) and -est (superlative) are adjective and adverb inflections. derivational morpheme: this type of morpheme changes the meaning of the word or the part of speech or both. Derivational morphemes often create new words. Example: the prefix and derivational morpheme un added to invited changes the meaning of the word. allomorphs: different phonetic forms or variations of a morpheme. Example: The final morphemes in the following words are pronounced differently, but they all indicate plurality: dogs, cats, and horses. homonyms: morphemes that are spelled the same but have different meanings. Examples: bear (an animal) and bear (to carry), plain (simple) and plain ( a level area of land).

homophones: morphemes that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings. Examples: bear, bare; plain, plane; cite, sight, site. Fifteen Common Prefixes and Ten Common Suffixes The following tables and tip are adopted from Grammar and Composition by Mary Beth Bauer, et al.

Prefix Meaning ad- to, toward circum- around, about com- with, together de- away from, off dis- away, apart ex- from, out in- not in, into

Prefix Meaning inter- between mis- wrong post- after re- back, again sub- beneath, under trans- across un- not

the act of or the state of being
Suffix Meaning -ly in a certain way -ment the result of being -ness the state of being -tion (-ion, -sion) the act of or the state of being -less without

-able (-ible) capable of being -ance (-ence) the act of -ate
Suffix Meaning -able (-ible) capable of being -ance (-ence) the act of -ate making or applying -ful full of -ity the state of being Tip Suffixes can also be used to tell the part of speech of a word. The following examples show the parts of speech

indicated by the suffixes in the chart
indicated by the suffixes in the chart. Nouns: -ance, -ful, -ity, -ment, -ness, -tion Verb: -ate Adjectives: -able, -ful, -less, -ly Adverb: -ly Morphology Morphology is the study of word structure. For example in the sentences The dog runs and The dogs run, the word forms runs and dogs have an affix -s added, distinguishing them from the bare forms dog and run. Adding this suffix to a nominal stem gives plural forms, adding it to verbal stems restricts the subject to third person singular. Some morphological theories operate with two distinct suffixes -s, called allomorphs of the morphemes Plural and Third person singular, respectively. Languages differ wrt.

to their morphological structure
. to their morphological structure. Along one axis, we may distinguish analytic languages, with few or no suffixes or other morphological processes from synthetic languages with many suffixes. Along another axis, we may distinguish agglutinative languages, where suffixes express one grammatical property each, and are added neatly one after another, from fusional languages, with non-concatenative morphological processes (infixation, Umlaut, Ablaut, etc.) and/or with less clear-cut suffix boundaries

Morpheme In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes, the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound. The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes cannot stand as words on their own. A morpheme is free if it can stand alone, or bound if it is used exclusively along side a free morpheme.

English example: The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes "un-", (meaning not x) a bound morpheme, "-break-" a free morpheme, and "-able". "un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both are affixes. Types of morphemes Free morphemes like town, dog can appear with other lexemes (as in town hall or dog house) or they can stand alone, or "free".

Free morphemes fall into two categories .
First :The set of ordinary nouns , adjectives and verbs this is called ( lexical morphemes ) eg) boy , man , sad , long , follow , break … Second :This set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions , prepositions and pronouns this is called ( functional morphemes) eg)and , but , on , near , the , that , it ……

Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes. Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as "cranberry" morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word. This also falls in two categories : First :Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so on. (as in the dog morpheme if written with the plural marker morpheme s becomes dogs). Noun 's , -s Verb s , -ing , -ed , -en Adjective est , -er

Second: Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: the addition of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to give "happiness." ( -less , -ness , pre- , un- , …..) Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g. the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as /-z/, /-s/ or /- ɪz/.

Free morpheme In linguistics, free morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone, unlike bound morphemes, which occur only as parts of words. In the English sentence colorless green ideas sleep furiously, for example, color, green, idea, and sleep are all free morphemes, whereas -less, -s and -ly are all bound morphemes

Morphemes that are not bound morphemes are free morphemes. Allomorph
Bound morphemes are morphemes that can occur only when attached to root morphemes. Affixes are bound morphemes. Common English bound morphemes include: -ing, -ed, -er, and pre-. Morphemes that are not bound morphemes are free morphemes. Allomorph An allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound (phonologically) without changing meaning. It is used in linguistics to explain the comprehension of variations in sound for a specific morpheme. [

Allomorphy in English English has several morphemes that vary in sound but not in meaning. Examples include the past tense and the plural morphemes. Example In the English language the past tense morpheme is -ed. It occurs in several allomorphs depending on its phonological environment, assimilating voicing of the previous segment or inserting a schwa when following an alveolar stop: as /əd/ in 'hunted' or 'banded', as /d/ in 'buzzed', as /t/ in 'fished'

morphological description
The girl's wildness shocked the teachers The girl 's wild ness shock (Functional) ( lexical ) (inflectional) (lexical) (derivational ) (lexical ) the teach er s ed ( inflectional ) (Functional ) (lexical) (derivational) ( inflectional)

Morphemes: 1.Free: a. Lexical b. Functional 2. Bound: a. Derivational
This shows the different categories of morphemes Morphemes: 1.Free: a. Lexical b. Functional 2. Bound: a. Derivational B. Inflectional

problems in morphological description
So far we have only considered examples of English words in which the different morphemes are easily identifiable . thus what is the inflectional morpheme which makes sheep the plural of sheep , or men the plural of man ? A related question concern the inflection which makes went the past of go . And yet another question concern the derivation of an adjective like legal . If al is the derivational suffix , as it is in forms like institutional , then what is the stem ? No it is not leg A full description of English morphology will have to take account of both historical influences and the effect of borrowed elements .

week11-12 Phrases and Sentences: Grammar

Phrases and sentences: grammar
We have described linguistic expressions as a sequences of sounds which can be represented phonetically e.g) the lucky boys ( voiced fricative) (voiceless stop) (diphthong) We can take the same linguistic expression and describe it as a sequence of morphemes . e.g) the luck y boy s ( functional) ( lexical) ( derivational) ( lexical) (inflectional) With these descriptions, we could characterize all the words of a language in terms of their phonetic and morphological make-up.

Grammar However, we have not yet accounted for the fact that these words can only be combined in a limited number of patterns. We recognize that the phrase the lucky boys is a well-formed piece of English, but that the following two 'phrases' are not at all well-formed: *boys the lucky *lucky boys the (Beside each of these ill-formed structures there is an asterisk (*), which is a conventional way of indicating that a structure is ill-formed, or ungrammatical.) So, we need a way of describing the structure of phrases and sentences which will account for all of the grammatical sequences and rule out all the ungrammatical sequences. Providing such an account involves us in the study of grammar. We should note that this term is frequently used to cover a number of different phenomena.

Types of grammar Each adult speaker of a language clearly has some type of 'mental grammar', that is, a form of internal linguistic knowledge which operates in the production and recognition of appropriately structured expressions in that language. This 'grammar' is subconscious and is not the result of any teaching . A second, and quite different, concept of' grammar' involves what might be considered 'linguistic etiquette', that is, the identification of the 'proper' or 'best' structures to be used in a language. A third view of 'grammar' involves the study and analysis of the structures found a language, usually with the aim of establishing a description of the grammar of English, for example, as distinct from the grammar of Russian or French or any other language.

Given these three concepts, we can say that, in general, the first may be of most interest to a psychologist, since it deals with what goes on in people's minds, and the second may be of interest to a sociologist, since it has to do with people's social attitudes and values. The third is what occupies many linguists, since the concern is with the nature of language, often independently of the users of the language. The study of grammar. in this narrow sense of the stud of the structure of expressions in a language, has a very long tradition

The parts of speech You may already be familiar with many of the terms used in a grammatical description, particularly the terms for the parts of speech, as illustrated in this sentence: The lucky boys saw the clowns at (Article ) ( adjective) ( noun) ( verb) ( article) (noun) ( preposition ) The circus and they cheered loudly (Article ) ( noun ) ( conjunction) ( pronoun ) ( verb ) ( adverb

Simple definitions of these terms can be presented in the following way:
Nouns are words used to refer to people, objects, creatures, places, qualities, phenomena and abstract ideas as if they were all 'things'. Adjectives are words used, typically with nouns, to provide more information about the 'things' referred to (happy people, large objects, cute creatures ,stupid ideas). Verbs are words used to refer to various kinds of actions (run, jump) and states (be ,seem) involving the 'things' in events. Adverbs are words used to provide more information about the actions and events (slowly, suddenly). Some adverbs (really, very) are also used with adjectives to modify the information about 'things' (really large objects, very stupid ideas). Prepositions are words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in phrases providing information about time (at five, in the morning), place (on the table, near the window) and other connections (with a knife, without a thought) involving actions and things.

Pronouns are words (me, they, he, himself, this, it) used in place of noun phrases, typically referring to things already known (he likes himself ,this~ it!) Conjunctions are words (and, but, although, if) used to connect, and indicate relationships between, events and things (we swam although it was very cold). Simple definitions of this type are useful for identifying most forms in a language like English, but they are never completely accurate. A different approach might focus on some other properties of the parts of speech. For example, a noun can be defined as a form that comes after an article ( the ,a ) and can take inflections for possessive (-:SO) and plural (-s). Of course, not all nouns (e.g. information, mud) have all these characteristics. Procedures for the structural analysis of the parts of speech are presented later.

Traditional grammar se terms, used to label the grammatical categories of words in sentences, come from traditional grammar, which has its origins in the description of languages like Classical Latin and Greek. Since there were well-established grammatical descriptions of these older languages, it seemed appropriate to adopt the existing categories from these descriptions and apply them in the analysis of languages like English. After all, Latin and Greek were the languages of scholarship, religion, philosophy and 'knowledge', so the grammar of these languages was taken to be the best grammar.

Traditional categories
addition to the terms used for the parts of speech, traditional grammatical analysis also gave us a number of other categories, including 'number', person', 'tense', 'voice' and 'gender'. These categories can be discussed in ,isolation, but their role in describing language structure becomes clearer 'hen we consider them in terms of agreement. For example, we say that the 'verb likes 'agrees with' the noun boy in the sentence The boy likes his dog. This agreement is partially based on the category of number, that is, whether le noun is singular or plural.

It is also based on the category of person, which covers the distinctions of first person (involving the speaker), second person (involving the hearer) and third person (involving any others). The different forms of English pronouns are usually described in terms of person number, in that we have first person singular (I), second person singular(you), third person singular (he, she, it), first person plural (we),and so ,So, in the sentence The boy likes his dog, we have a noun boy, which is . d person singular, and the verb likes 'agrees with' the noun.

In addition, the form of the verb must also be described in terms of another category, that of tense. In this case, the verb (likes) is in the present tense, which is distinguished from the past tense (liked). The sentence is also in the active voice, with the boy doing the liking. An alternative is the passive voice, in which the liking is done to the boy, as in The boy is liked by his dog, or just The boy is liked.

Our final category is that of gender, which helps us describe the agreement between boy and his in our example sentence. In English, we have to describe this relationship in terms of natural gender, mainly derived from a biological distinction between male and female. The agreement between boy and his is based on a distinction English makes between reference to male entities (he, his), female entities (she, her), and sexless entities, or animals, when the sex of the animal is irrelevant (it, its).

This type of biological distinction is quite different from the more common distinction found in languages which use grammatical gender. In !hi latter sense, nouns are classified according to their gender class and, typically , articles and adjectives take different forms to 'agree with' the gender m the noun. Spanish, for example, has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, illustrated by the expressions el sol ('the sun') and la Luna ('the moon') respectively. German uses three genders, masculine der Mon/ ('the moon'), feminine die Sonne ('the sun') and neuter dos Feuer ('the fire'). Note the different forms of the articles in both the Spanish and German examples, corresponding to differences in the gender class of the nouns. Also note that the gender distinction is not based on a distinction in sex. young girl is biologically 'female', but the German noun dos Madchen is grammatically 'neuter'.

. The French word le livre ('the book') is grammatically masculine, but we would not consider books to be biologically malt. So, the grammatical category of gender is very usefully applied in describing a number of languages (including Latin), but may not be as appropriate in describing English.

Traditional analysis The notion of 'appropriateness' of analytic categories has not always been a consideration. In traditional grammar books, tables such as the following were often presented for English, constructed by analogy with similar table! of forms in Latin grammars. The forms for the Latin verb amare ('to love') are listed on the right.

Note that each of the Latin verb forms is different, according to the categories of person and number, yet the English forms are, with one exception, the same. Thus it makes some sense, in describing a language like Latin. 10 have all those descriptive categories to characterize verb forms, yet it seems a rather extravagant descriptive system for English. The influence of Latin, however, goes beyond the descriptive labels.

The prescriptive approach
It is one thing to adopt the grammatical labels (e.g. 'noun', 'verb') to categorize in English sentences; it is quite another thing to go on to claim the structure of English sentences should be like the structure of sentences in Latin. Yet this was an approach taken by some grammarians, mainly eighteenth-century England, who set out rules for the correct or per' use of English. This view of grammar as a set of rules for the 'proper' of a language is still to be found today and may be best characterized the prescriptive approach. Some familiar examples of prescriptive rules English sentences are as

(1) You must not split an infinitive.
follows: (1) You must not split an infinitive. (2) You must not end a sentence with a preposition. there are, of course, many such rules which generations of English teachers have attempted to instill in their pupils via corrections, as when the sentence Mary runs faster than me is 'corrected' to read Mary runs faster than I. And Who did you see? is 'corrected' to Whom did you see? And never begin a sentence with and. It may, in fact, be a valuable part of one's education to be made aware of Ibis 'linguistic etiquette', or the 'proper' use of the language. If it is a social expectation that someone who writes well should obey these prescriptive rules, then social judgments such as "poorly educated" may be made about someone who does not follow these rules. However, it is worth considering the probable origins of these rules and !Sting whether they are appropriately applied to the English language. Let as take one example: "You must not split an infinitive."

Captain Kirk's infinitive
The infinitive in English has the form to + the verb, as in to go, and can be used with an adverb such as boldly. So, at the beginning of each televised 'Star Trek' episode, Captain Kirk used the expression To boldly go... . This is an example of a split infinitive. Captain Kirk's English teacher should have taught him to say To go boldly or Boldly to go. If Captain Kirk had been a Roman space traveler, speaking Latin, he would have used the expressions ire ('to go') and audacter ('boldly'). Now, in saying Ire audacter ... in Latin, Captain Kirkus would not even have the opportunity to split his infinitive (ire), because Latin infinitives are single words and just ~o not split.

So, it would be very appropriate in Latin grammar to say that you cannot
split an infinitive. But is it appropriate to carry this idea over into English where the infinitive does not consist of a single word, but of two words, to and go? If it is a typical feature of the use of English that speakers and writers do produce forms such as to boldly go or to solemnly swear, then we may wish to say that there are structures in English which differ from those found in Latin, rather than to say that the English forms are 'bad" because they are breaking a supposed rule of Latin grammar.

The descriptive approach
It may be that using a well-established grammatical description of Latin is useful guide for studying some languages (e.g. Italian or Spanish), is le~ useful for others (e.g. English), and may be absolutely misleading if you want to describe some non-European languages. This last point became clear to those linguists who wanted to describe the structure of North American Indian languages at the end of the nineteenth century. The categories and rules which were appropriate for Latin grammar just did n~ seem to fit the Indian languages encountered. As a consequence, through. out the present century, a rather different approach has been taken Analysts collect samples of the language they are interested in and attempt to describe the regular structures of the language as it is used. not according to some view of how it should be used. This is called the descriptive approach and it is the basis of most modern attempts to characterize the structure of different languages.

Structural analysis One type of descriptive approach is called structural analysis and its main concern is to investigate the distribution of forms (e.g. morphemes) in a language. The method employed involves the use of 'test-frames' which can be sentences with empty slots in them. For example: The makes a lot of noise . I heard a yesterday .

There are a lot of forms which can fit into these slots to produce good grammatical sentences of English (e.g. donkey, car, dog, radio, child, etc) Consequently, we can suggest that because all of these forms fit in the same test-frame, they are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category : The label we give to this grammatical category is, of course, 'noun ' . However, there are many forms which do not fit the test-frames above . Examples would be Cathy, it, the dog, a car, and so on. For these forms ,we require different test-frames , which could be like this :

------------------------------------makes a lot of noise .
I heard yesterday . Among the forms which fit these test-frames are Cathy, Anna Banana, it, the dog, an old car, the professor with the Scottish accent, and many more. Once again, we can suggest that these forms are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category. The common label for this category is 'noun phrase'. By developing a set of test-frames of this type and discovering what forms fit me slots in the test-frames, you can produce a description of (at least some) aspects of the sentence structures of a language.

Traditional categories
addition to the terms used for the parts of speech, traditional grammatical analysis also gave us a number of other categories, including 'number', person', 'tense', 'voice' and 'gender'. These categories can be discussed in ,isolation, but their role in describing language structure becomes clearer 'hen we consider them in terms of agreement. For example, we say that the 'verb likes 'agrees with' the noun boy in the sentence The boy likes his dog. This agreement is partially based on the category of number, that is, whether le noun is singular or plural.

It is also based on the category of person, which covers the distinctions of first person (involving the speaker), second person (involving the hearer) and third person (involving any others). The different forms of English pronouns are usually described in terms of person number, in that we have first person singular (I), second person singular(you), third person singular (he, she, it), first person plural (we),and so ,So, in the sentence The boy likes his dog, we have a noun boy, which is . d person singular, and the verb likes 'agrees with' the noun.

In addition, the form of the verb must also be described in terms of another category, that of tense. In this case, the verb (likes) is in the present tense, which is distinguished from the past tense (liked). The sentence is also in the active voice, with the boy doing the liking. An alternative is the passive voice, in which the liking is done to the boy, as in The boy is liked by his dog, or just The boy is liked. Our final category is that of gender, which helps us describe the agreement between boy and his in our example sentence. In English, we have to describe this relationship in terms of natural gender, mainly derived from a biological distinction between male and female. The agreement between boy and his is based on a distinction English makes between reference to male entities (he, his), female entities (she, her), and sexless entities, or animals, when the sex of the animal is irrelevant (it, its).

This type of biological distinction is quite different from the more common distinction found in languages which use grammatical gender. In !hi latter sense, nouns are classified according to their gender class and, typically , articles and adjectives take different forms to 'agree with' the gender m the noun. Spanish, for example, has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, illustrated by the expressions el sol ('the sun') and la Luna ('the moon') respectively. German uses three genders, masculine der Mon/ ('the moon'), feminine die Sonne ('the sun') and neuter dos Feuer ('the fire'). Note the different forms of the articles in both the Spanish and German

examples, corresponding to differences in the gender class of the nouns. Also note that the gender distinction is not based on a distinction in sex. young girl is biologically 'female', but the German noun dos Madchen is grammatically 'neuter'. The French word le livre ('the book') is grammatically masculine, but we would not consider books to be biologically malt. So, the grammatical category of gender is very usefully applied in describing a number of languages (including Latin), but may not be as appropriate in describing English.

Traditional analysis The notion of 'appropriateness' of analytic categories has not always been a consideration. In traditional grammar books, tables such as the following were often presented for English, constructed by analogy with similar table! of forms in Latin grammars. The forms for the Latin verb amare ('to love') are listed on the right. Note that each of the Latin verb forms is different, according to the categories of person and number, yet the English forms are, with one exception, the same. Thus it makes some sense, in describing a language like Latin. 10 have all those descriptive categories to characterize verb forms, yet it seems a rather extravagant descriptive system for English. The influence of Latin, however, goes beyond the descriptive labels.

The prescriptive approach
It is one thing to adopt the grammatical labels (e.g. 'noun', 'verb') to categorize in English sentences; it is quite another thing to go on to claim the structure of English sentences should be like the structure of sentences in Latin. Yet this was an approach taken by some grammarians, mainly eighteenth-century England, who set out rules for the correct or per' use of English. This view of grammar as a set of rules for the 'proper' of a language is still to be found today and may be best characterized the prescriptive approach. Some familiar examples of prescriptive rules English sentences are as follows: (1) You must not split an infinitive. (2) You must not end a sentence with a preposition

The elided form of a word or phrase may become a standard alternative for the full form, if used often enough. In English, this is called a contraction, such as can't from cannot. Contraction differs from elision in that contractions are set forms that have morphologized, but elisions are not. A synonym for elision is syncope. This term is most often associated with the elision of vowels between consonants (e.g., Latin tabula → Spanish tabla). Another form of elision is aphesis, which means elision at the beginning of a word (generally of an unstressed vowel). The opposite of elision is epenthesis, whereby sounds are inserted into a word to ease pronunciation

Captain Kirk's infinitive
The infinitive in English has the form to + the verb, as in to go, and can be used with an adverb such as boldly. So, at the beginning of each televised 'Star Trek' episode, Captain Kirk used the expression To boldly go... . This is an example of a split infinitive. Captain Kirk's English teacher should have taught him to say To go boldly or Boldly to go.

. If Captain Kirk had been a Roman space traveler, speaking Latin, he would have used the expressions ire ('to go') and audacter ('boldly'). Now, in saying Ire audacter ... in Latin, Captain Kirkus would not even have the opportunity to split his infinitive (ire), because Latin infinitives are single words and just ~o not split. So, it would be very appropriate in Latin grammar to say that you cannot split an infinitive.

But is it appropriate to carry this idea over into English where the infinitive does not consist of a single word, but of two words, to and go? If it is a typical feature of the use of English that speakers and writers do produce forms such as to boldly go or to solemnly swear, then we may wish to say that there are structures in English which differ from those found in Latin, rather than to say that the English forms are 'bad" because they are breaking a supposed rule of Latin grammar.

The descriptive approach
It may be that using a well-established grammatical description of Latin is useful guide for studying some languages (e.g. Italian or Spanish), is le~ useful for others (e.g. English), and may be absolutely misleading if you want to describe some non-European languages.

This last point became clear to those linguists who wanted to describe the structure of North American Indian languages at the end of the nineteenth century. The categories and rules which were appropriate for Latin grammar just did n~ seem to fit the Indian languages encountered. As a consequence, through. out the present century, a rather different approach has been taken Analysts collect samples of the language they are interested in and attempt to describe the regular structures of the language as it is used. not according to some view of how it should be used. This is called the descriptive approach and it is the basis of most modern attempts to characterize the structure of different languages.

Structural analysis One type of descriptive approach is called structural analysis and its main concern is to investigate the distribution of forms (e.g. morphemes) in a language. The method employed involves the use of 'test-frames' which can be sentences with empty slots in them. For example:

The------------------------------------------------------makes a lot of noise .
I heard a yesterday . There are a lot of forms which can fit into these slots to produce good grammatical sentences of English (e.g. donkey, car, dog, radio, child, etc) Consequently, we can suggest that

because all of these forms fit in the same test-frame, they are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category : The label we give to this grammatical category is, of course, 'noun ' . However, there are many forms which do not fit the test-frames above . Examples would be Cathy, it, the dog, a car, and so on. For these forms ,we require different test-frames ,

which could be like this :
makes a lot of noise . I heard yesterday . Among the forms which fit these test-frames are Cathy, Anna Banana, it, the dog, an old car, the professor with the Scottish accent, and many more. Once again, we can suggest that these forms are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category.

The common label for this category is 'noun phrase'
The common label for this category is 'noun phrase'. By developing a set of test-frames of this type and discovering what forms fit me slots in the test-frames, you can produce a description of (at least some) aspects of the sentence structures of a language.

Immediate constituent analysis
An approach with the same descriptive aims is called immediate constituent analysis. The technique employed in this approach is designed to show how small constituents (or components) in sentences go together to form larger constituents. In the following sentence, we can identify eight constituents (al the word level): Her father brought a shotgun to the weddIng.

How do those eight constituents go together to form constituents at the phrase level? Does it seem appropriate to put the words together as follows? Brought a father brought shotgun to to the We don't normally think of these combinations as phrases in English

We are more likely to say that the phrase-like constituents here are combinations of the following types: Her father, a shotgun, the wedding, which are noun phrases; to the wedding, which is a prepositional phrase; brought a shotgun, which is a verb phrase. This analysis of the constituent structure of the sentence can be represented in different types of diagrams. One type of diagram simply shows the distribution of the constituents at different levels.

This type of diagram can be used to show the types of forms which can substitute for each other at different levels of constituent structure.

week13-14 Semantics, Second Exam

Semantics (Greek sēmantikos, giving signs, significant, symptomatic meaning, from sēma (σῆμα), sign) refers to aspects of meaning, as expressed in language or other systems of signs.

As discussed in semiotics, the theory of signs, by the Vienna Circle, particularly in their International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, the field breaks out into three branches: Semantics: Relation between signs and the things they refer to, their denotata.

Syntactics: Relation of signs to each other in formal structures.
Pragmatics: Relation of signs to their impacts on those who use them. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which is the study of the structure of sign systems (focusing on the form, not meaning).

When analyzing languages, an analysis can be said to cover both the "syntax and semantics" concerning both the format and meanings of phrases in a language.

The term semantics can apply not only to natural languages, such as English, German or Latin, but also to technical languages, such as a computer programming language. Related to semantics is the field of pragmatics, which studies the practical use of signs by agents or communities of interpretation within particular circumstances and contexts.[1] By the usual convention that calls a study or a theory by the name of its subject matter, semantics may also denote the theoretical study of meaning in systems of signs.

Semanticists generally recognize two sorts of meaning that an expression (such as the sentence, "John ate a bagel") may have: (1) the relation that the expression, broken down into its constituent parts (signs), has to things and situations in the real world as well as possible worlds, and (2) the relation the signs have to other signs, such as the sorts of mental signs that are conceived of as concepts.

Most theorists refer to the relation between a sign and its objects, as always including any manner of objective reference, as its denotation. Some theorists refer to the relation between a sign and the signs that serve in its practical interpretation as its connotation, but there are many more differences of opinion and distinctions of theory that are made in this case. Many theorists, especially in the formal semantic, pragmatic, and semiotic traditions, restrict the application of semantics to the denotative aspect, using other terms or completely ignoring the connotative aspect. Etymology

Semantics is derived from the Greek "σημαντικός" or semantikos, meaning "significant". The word semantic appears in French as sémantique, as used by Michel Bréal during the 19th century, in his 1897 book published in Paris, Essai de sémantique, considered the first use of the term "semantics" in the modern sense

The dynamic turn in semantics
This traditional view of semantics, as a finite meaning inherent in a lexical unit that can be composed to generate meanings for larger chunks of discourse, is being fiercely debated in the emerging domain of cognitive linguistics[2] and also in the non-Fodorian camp in Philosophy of Language[3]. The challenge is motivated by

factors internal to language, such as the problem of resolving indexical or anaphora (e.g. this X, him, last week). In these situations "context" serves as the input, but the interpreted utterance also modifies the context, so it is also the output. Thus, the interpretation is necessarily dynamic and the meaning of sentences are viewed as context-change potentials instead of

propositions. factors external to language, i.e. Language is not a set of labels stuck on things, but "a toolbox, the importance of whose elements lie in the way they function rather than their attachments to things."[3] This view reflects the position of the later Wittgenstein and his famous game example, and is related to the positions of Quine, Davidson and others. A concrete example of the latter phenomenon is semantic underspecification — meanings are not complete without some elements of context.

To take an example of a single word, "red", its meaning in a phrase such as red book is similar to many other usages, and can be viewed as compositional[4]. However, the color implied in phrases such as "red wine" (very dark), and "red hair" (coppery), or "red soil", or "red skin" - are very different. Indeed, these colours by themselves would not be called "red" by native speakers. These instances are contrastive, so "red wine" is so called only in comparison with the other kind of wine (which also is not "white" for the same reasons). This view goes back to de Saussure:

Each of a set of synonyms like redouter ('to dread'), craindre ('to fear'), avoir peur ('to be afraid') has its particular value only because they stand in contrast with one another. No word has a value that can be identified independently of what else is in its vicinity.[5] and may go back to earlier Indian views on language, especially the Nyaya view of words as indicators and not carriers of meaning[6].

An attempt to defend a system based on propositional meaning for semantic underspecification can be found in the Generative Lexicon model of James Pustejovsky, who extends contextual operations (based on type shifting) into the lexicon. Thus meanings are generated on the fly based on finite context.

Prototype theory Another set of concepts related to fuzziness in semantics is based on prototypes. The work of Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff in the 1970s led to a view that natural categories are not characterizable in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but are graded (fuzzy at their boundaries) and inconsistent as to the status of their constituent members.

Systems of categories are not objectively "out there" in the world but are rooted in people's experience. These categories evolve as learned concepts of the world —meaning is not an objective truth, but a subjective construct, learned from experience, and language arises out of the "grounding of our conceptual systems in shared embodiment and bodily experience"[7]. A corollary of this is that the conceptual categories (i.e. the lexicon) will not be identical for different cultures, or indeed, for every individual in the same culture.

This leads to another debate (see the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis or Eskimo words for snow).
] Computer science In computer science, considered in part as an application of mathematical logic, semantics reflects the meaning of programs or functions.

In this regard, semantics permits programs to be separated into their syntatical part (grammatical structure) and their semantic part (meaning). For instance, the following statements use different syntaxes (languages), but result in the same semantic: x += y; (C, Java, etc) Let x = x + y; or x = x + y (various Basics)

Generally these operations would all perform an arithmetical addition of 'y' to 'x'.
Semantics for computer applications falls into three categories[8]:

Operational semantics: The meaning of a construct is specified by the computation it induces when it is executed on a machine. In particular, it is of interest how the effect of a computation is produced. Denotational semantics: Meanings are modelled by mathematical objects that represent the effect of executing the constructs. Thus only the effect is of interest, not how it is obtained.

Lexical semantics is a subfield of linguistics.
Axiomatic semantics: Specific properties of the effect of executing the constructs as expressed as assertions. Thus there may be aspects of the executions that are ignored. The Semantic Web refers to the extension of the World Wide Web through the embedding of additional semantic metadata Lexical semantics is a subfield of linguistics.

It is the study of how and what the words of a language denote (Pustejovsky, 1995). Words may either be taken to denote things in the world, or concepts, depending on the particular approach to lexical semantics.

Lexical units are the words so lexical semantics involves the meaning of each individual word. Lexical semantics is the one area of linguistics to which we can continually add throughout our lives, as we are always learning new words and their meanings whereas we can only learn the rules of our native language during the critical period when we are young.

It covers theories of the classification and decomposition of word meaning, the differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure between different languages, and the relationship of word meaning to sentence meaning and syntax.

week15 Syntax

Syntax In the course of the preceding chapter, we moved from a consideration of general grammatical categories and relations to specific methods of describing the structure of phrases and sentences. If we concentrate on the structure and ordering of components within a sentence, we are studying what is technically known as the syntax of a language.

The word 'syntax' came originally from Greek and literally meant 'a setting out together' or 'arrangement'. In earlier approaches to the description of syntax, as we saw in Chapter 9, there was an attempt to produce an accurate analysis of the sequence or the ordering 'arrangement' of elements in the linear structure of the sentence.

While this remains a major goal of syntactic description,
more recent work in syntax has taken a rather different approach in accounting for the 'arrangements' we observe in the structure of sentences.

Generative grammar Since the 1950s, particularly developing from the work of the American linguist Noam Chomsky, there have been attempts to produce a particular type of grammar which would have a very explicit system of rules specifying what combinations of basic elements would result in well-formed sentences. (Let us emphasize the word "attempts" here, since no fully worked-out grammar of this or any other type yet exists.)

This explicit system of rules, it was proposed, would have much in common with the types of rules found in mathematics. Indeed, a definitive early statement in Chomsky's first major work betrays this essentially mathematical view of language: "I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences" (Chomsky, 1957: 13).

This mathematical point of view helps to explain the meaning of the term
generative, which is used to describe this type of grammar. If you have an algebraic expression like 3x + 2y, and you can give x and y the value of any whole number, then that simple algebraic

expression can generate an endless set of values, by following the simple rules of arithmetic. When x = 5 and y = 10, the result is 35. When x = 2 and y = I, the result is 8. These results will follow directly from applying the explicit rules.

The endless set of such results is 'generated' by the operation of the explicitly formalized rules. If the sentences of a language can be seen as a comparable set, then there must be a set of explicit rules which yield those sentences. Such a set of explicit rules is a generative grammar.

Some properties of the grammar
A grammar of this type must have a number of properties, which can be described in the following terms. The grammar will generate all the well formed syntactic structures (e.g. sentences) of the language and fail to generate any ill-formed structures. This is the 'all and only' criterion (Le. all the grammatical sentences and only the grammatical sentences).

The grammar will have a finite (i. e
The grammar will have a finite (i.e. limited) number of rules, but will be capable of generating an infinite number of well-formed structures. In this way, the productivity of language (i.e. the creation of totally novel, yet grammatical, sentences) would be captured within the grammar.

The rules of this grammar will also need the crucial property of recursion, that is, the capacity to be applied more than once in generating a structure. For example, whatever rule yields the component that chased the cat in

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