Linguistics fact sheets

(Source: An Introduction to Language by Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman, 6th Ed.)

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

Every human knows at least one language, spoken or signed. Linguistics is the
science of language, including the sounds, words, and grammar rules. Words in
languages are finite, but sentences are not. It is this creative aspect of human
language that sets it apart from animal languages, which are essentially
responses to stimuli.

The rules of a language, also called grammar, are learned as one acquires a
language. These rules include phonology, the sound system, morphology, the
structure of words, syntax, the combination of words into sentences,
semantics, the ways in which sounds and meanings are related, and the
lexicon, or mental dictionary of words. When you know a language, you know
words in that language, i.e. sound units that are related to specific meanings.
However, the sounds and meanings of words are arbitrary.

Knowing a language encompasses this entire system, but this knowledge (called
competence) is different from behavior (called performance.) You may know
a language, but you may also choose to not speak it. Although you are not
speaking the language, you still have the knowledge of it. However, if you don't
know a language, you cannot speak it at all.

There are two types of grammars: descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive
grammars represent the unconscious knowledge of a language. English
speakers, for example, know that "me likes apples" is incorrect and "I like
apples" is correct, although the speaker may not be able to explain why.
Descriptive grammars do not teach the rules of a language, but rather describe
rules that are already known. In contrast, prescriptive grammars dictate what
a speaker's grammar should be and they include teaching grammars, which are
written to help teach a foreign language.
There are about 5,000 languages in the world right now (give or take a
few thousand), and linguists have discovered that these languages are more
alike than different from each other. There are universal concepts and properties
that are shared by all languages, and these principles are contained in the
Universal Grammar, which forms the basis of all possible human languages.

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PART TWO: MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be
subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes
can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An
example of a free morpheme is "bad", and an example of a bound morpheme is
"ly." It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must
be attached to another morpheme to produce a word.
Free morpheme: bad
Bound morpheme: ly
Word: badly

When we talk about words, there are two groups: lexical (or content) and
function (or grammatical) words. Lexical words are called open class words and
include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. New words can regularly be added
to this group. Function words, or closed class words, are conjunctions,
prepositions, articles and pronouns; and new words cannot be (or are very
rarely) added to this class.

Affixes are often the bound morpheme. This group includes prefixes,
suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes. Prefixes are added to the beginning of
another morpheme, suffixes are added to the end, infixes are inserted into other
morphemes, and circumfixes are attached to another morpheme at the
beginning and end. Following are examples of each of these:
Prefix: re- added to doproducesredo
Suffix: -or added to edit produces editor
Infix: -um- added to fikas (strong) produces
fumikas (to be strong) in Bontoc
Circumfix: ge- and -t to lieb (love) produces geliebt
(loved) in German

There are two categories of affixes: derivational and inflectional. The main
difference between the two is that derivational affixes are added to morphemes
to form new words that may or may not be the same part of speech and
inflectional affixes are added to the end of an existing word for purely
grammatical reasons. In English there are only eight total inflectional affixes:

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-s 3rd person singular present she waits
-ed past tense she waited
-ing progressive she's eating
-en past participle she has eaten
-s plural three apples
-'s possessive Lori's son
-er comparative you are taller
-est superlative you are the shortest

The other type of bound morphemes are called bound roots. These are
morphemes (and not affixes) that must be attached to another morpheme and
do not have a meaning of their own. Some examples are -ceive in perceive and
mit in submit.

English Morphemes
A. Free
1. Open Class
2. Closed Class
B. Bound
1. Affix
a. Derivational
b. Inflectional
2. Root
3.
There are six ways to form new words. Compounds are a combination of
words, acronyms are derived from the initials of words, back-formations are
created from removing what is mistakenly considered to be an affix,
abbreviations or clippings are shortening longer words, eponyms are
created from proper nouns (names), and blending is combining parts of words
into one.
Compound: doghouse
Acronym: NBA (National Basketball Association) or
scuba(self-contained underwater breathing apparatus)
Back-formation: edit from editor
Abbreviation: phone from telephone
Eponym: sandwich from Earl of Sandwich
Blending: smog from smoke and fog

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Grammar is learned unconsciously at a young age. Ask any five year old, and he
will tell you that "I eat" and "you eat," but his "dog eats." But a human's
syntactical knowledge goes farther than what is grammatical and what is not. It
also accounts for ambiguity, in which a sentence could have two meanings, and
enables us to determine grammatical relationships such as subject and direct
object. Although we may not consciously be able to define the terms, we
unconsciously know how to use them in sentences.

Syntax, of course, depends on lexical categories (parts of speech.) You probably
learned that there are 8 main parts of speech in grammar school. Linguistics
takes a different approach to these categories and separates words into
morphological and syntactic groups. Linguistics analyzes words according to their
affixes and the words that follow or precede them. Hopefully, the following
definitions of the parts of speech will make more sense and be of more use than
the old definitions of grammar school books.

Open Class Words
_____ + plural endings Det. Adj. _____ (this is called a Noun Phrase)
Nouns
"dogs" "the big dog"

_______ + tense endings Aux. ____ (this is called a Verb Phrase)
Verbs
"speaks" "have spoken"
______ + er / est Det. ____ Noun
Adjectives
"small" "the smaller child"

Adj. + ly ____ Adj. or Verb or Adv.
Adverbs
"quickly" "quickly ran"

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Closed Class Words
a, an, the, this, that, these, _____________ Adj. Noun
Determiners
those, pronouns, quantities "this blue book"

Auxiliary forms of be, have, may, NP __________________ VP
Verbs can, shall "the girl is swimming"

_____ NP (this is called a Prep. Phase)
Prepositions at, in, on, under, over, of
"in the room"

N or V or Adj. ____________ N or V
Conjunctions and, but, or or Adj.
"apples and oranges"

Sub categorization defines the restrictions on which syntactic categories (parts
of speech) can or cannot occur within a lexical item. These additional
specifications of words are included in our mental lexicon. Verbs are the most
common categories that are subcategorized. Verbs can either be transitive or
intransitive. Transitive verbs take a direct object, while intransitive verbs
take an indirect object (usually they need a preposition before the noun).

Transitive verb: to eat I ate an apple. (direct object)
Intransitive: to sleep I was sleeping in the bed. (indirect object)

Individual nouns can also be subcategorized. For example, the noun idea can be
followed by a Prepositional Phrase or that and a sentence. But the noun
compassion can only be followed by a Prepositional Phrase and not a sentence.
(Ungrammatical sentences are marked with asterisks.)

the idea of stricter laws his compassion for the animals
the idea that stricter laws
*his compassion that the animals are hurt
are necessary

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Phrase structure rules describe how phrases are formed and in what order.
These rules define the following:

Noun Phrase (NP) (Det.) (Adj.) Noun (PP)
Verb Phrase (VP) Verb (NP) (PP)
Prepositional Phrase (PP) Prep. NP
Sentence (S) NP VP

The parentheses indicate the categories are optional. Verbs don't always have to
be followed by prepositional phrases and nouns don't always have to be
preceded by adjectives.

Passive Sentences
The difference between the two sentences "Mary hired Bill" and "Bill was hired
by Mary" is that the first is active and the second is passive. In order to change
an active sentence into a passive one, the object of the active must become the
subject of the passive. The verb in the passive sentence becomes a form of "be"
plus the participle form of the main verb. And the subject of the active becomes
the object of the passive preceded by the word "by."

Active Passive
Mary hired Bill. Bill was hired by Mary.
Subject + Verb + Object Object + "be" + Verb + by + Subject

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PART THREE: PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

There are three types of the study of the sounds of language. Acoustic
Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of sounds. Auditory
Phonetics is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds. Articulatory
Phonetics (the type this lesson is concerned with) is the study of how the vocal
tracts produce the sounds.

The orthography (spelling) of words in misleading, especially in English. One
sound can be represented by several different combinations of letters. For
example, all of the following words contain the same vowel sound: he, believe,
Lee, Caesar, key, amoeba, loudly, machine, people, and sea. The following poem
illustrates this fact of English humorously (note the pronunciation of the bold
words):

I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Some may stumble, but not you, on hiccough, thorough, slough, and
through?
So now you are ready, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word, that looks like beard, but sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead; for goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat. (They rhyme with suite and
straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother, nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose - just look them up - and goose and
choose
Andcork and work and card and ward and font and front and word and
sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart, come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive! I've learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried, I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.
- Author Unknown

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds led to the formation of the
International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.) The symbols used in this alphabet
can be used to represent all sounds of all human languages. The following is the

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English Phonetic alphabet. You might want to memorize all of these symbols, as
most foreign language dictionaries use the IPA.

Phonetic Alphabet for English Pronunciation

p pill d dill h heal ʌ but

b bill n neal l leaf aj light

m mill s seal r reef ɔ j boy

f feel z zeal j you ɪ bit

v veal č chill w witch ɛ bet

θ thigh ǰ Jill i beet ʊ foot

ð thy ʍ which e bait ɔ awe

š shill k kill u boot a bar

ž azure g gill o boat ə sofa

t till ŋ ring æ bat aw cow

Some speakers of English pronounce the words which and witch differently, but
if you pronounce both words identically, just use w for both words. And the
sounds /ʌ / and /ə/ are pronounced the same, but the former is used in stressed
syllables, while the latter is used in unstressed syllables. This list does not even
begin to include all of the phonetic symbols though. One other symbol is the
glottal stop, ʔ which is somewhat rare in English. Some linguists in the United
States traditionally use different symbols than the IPA symbols. These are listed
below.
U.S. IPA
š ʃ
ž ʒ
č tʃ
ǰ dʒ
U ʊ

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The production of any speech sound involves the movement of air. Air is pushed
through the lungs, larynx (vocal folds) and vocal tract (the oral and nasal
cavities.) Sounds produced by using air from the lungs are called pulmonic
sounds. If the air is pushed out, it is called egressive. If the air is sucked in, it is
called ingressive. Sounds produced by ingressive airstreams are ejectives,
implosives, and clicks. These sounds are common among African and American
Indian languages. The majority of languages in the world use pulmonic egressive
airstream mechanisms, and I will present only these types of sounds in this
lesson.

Consonants
Consonants are produced as air from the lungs is pushed through the glottis (the
opening between the vocal cords) and out the mouth. They are classified
according to voicing, aspiration, nasal/oral sounds, places of articulation and
manners of articulation. Voicing is whether the vocal folds vibrate or not. The
sound /s/ is called voiceless because there is no vibration, and the sound /z/ is
called voiced because the vocal folds do vibrate (you can feel on your neck if
there is vibration.) Only three sounds in English have aspiration, the sounds /b/,
/p/ and /t/. An extra puff of air is pushed out when these sounds begin a word
or stressed syllable. Hold a piece of paper close to your mouth when saying the
words pin and spin. You should notice extra air when you say pin. Aspiration is
indicated in writing with a superscript h, as in /pʰ /. Nasal sounds are produced
when the velum (the soft palate located in the back of the roof of the mouth) is
lowered and air is passed through the nose and mouth. Oral sounds are
produced when the velum is raised and air passes only through the mouth.

Places of Articulation
Bilabial: lips together
Labiodental: lower lip against front teeth
Interdental: tongue between teeth
Alveolar: tongue near alveolar ridge on roof of mouth (in between teeth
and hard palate)
Palatal: tongue on hard palate
Velar: tongue near velum
Glottal: space between vocal folds

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The following sound is not found in the English language, although it is common
in languages such as French and Arabic:

Uvular: raise back of tongue to uvula (the appendage hanging down from
the velum)

Manners of Articulation
Stop: obstruct airstream completely
Fricative: partial obstruction with friction
Affricate: stop airstream, then release
Liquids: partial obstruction, no friction
Glides: little or no obstruction, must occur with a vowel

You should practice saying the sounds of the English alphabet to see if you can
identify the places of articulation in the mouth. The sounds are described by
voicing, place and then manner of articulation, so the sound /j/ would be called a
voiced palatal glide and the sound /s/ would be called a voiceless alveolar
fricative.

Interdent Alveola
Bilabial Labiodental Palatal Velar Glottal
al r
p t k
Stop (oral)
b d g
Nasal
m n ŋ
(stop)
f θ s š
Fricative h
v ð z ž
č
Affricate
ǰ
ʍ ʍ
Glide h
w j w
Liquid lr

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For rows that have two consonants, the top consonant is voiceless and the
bottom consonant is voiced. Nasal stops are all voiced, as are liquids. The sound
/j/ is also voiced. If sounds are in two places on the chart, that means they can
be pronounced either way.

Vowels
Vowels are produced by a continuous airstream and all are voiced. They are
classified according to height of the tongue, part of tongue involved, and position
of the lips. The tongue can be high, mid, or low; and the part of the tongue used
can be front, central or back. Only four vowels are produced with rounded lips
and only four vowels are considered tense instead of lax. The sound /a/ would
be written as a low back lax unrounded vowel. Many languages also have vowels
called diphthongs, a sequence of two sounds, vowel + glide. Examples in English
include oy in boy and ow in cow. In addition, vowels can be nasalized when they
occur before nasal consonants. A diacritic mark [~] is placed over the vowel to
show this. The vowel sounds in bee and bean are considered different because
the sound in bean is nasalized.

Part of Tongue

Front Central Back

i u
High
ɪ ʊ
Tongue
e ə o
Height Mid
ɛ ʌ ɔ
Low æ a

The bold vowels are tense, and the italic vowels are rounded. English also
includes the diphthongs: [aj] as in bite, [aw] as in cow, and [oj] as in boy.
For the complete IPA chart with symbols for the sounds of every human
language, please visit the International Phonetic Association's website. And
you're looking for a way to type English IPA symbols online, please visit
ipa.typeit.org

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Major Classes of Sounds (Distinctive Features)
All of the classes of sounds described above can be put into more general classes
that include the patterning of sounds in the world's languages. Continuant
sounds indicate a continuous airflow, while non-continuant sounds indicate
total obstruction of the airstream. Obstruent sounds do not allow air to escape
through the nose, while sonorant sounds have a relatively free airflow through
the mouth or nose. The following table summarizes this information:

Obstruent Sonorant
Continuant fricatives liquids, glides, vowels
oral stops,
Non-Continuant nasal stops
affricates

Major Class Features [+ Lateral] [l]
[+ Consonantal] consonants [- Lateral] [r]
[- Consonantal] vowels [+ Delayed Release] affricates [č, ǰ ]
[+Sonorant] nasals, liquids, glides, [- Delayed Release] stops [p, b, t, d, k,
vowels g, ʔ ]
[- Sonorant] stops, fricatives, affricates [+ Strident] “noisy” fricatives [f, v, s, z,
(obstruents) š, ž]
[+ Approximant] glides [j, w] [- Strident] [?, ð, h]
[- Approximant] everything else Place Features
Voice Features [Labial] involves lips [f, v, p, b, w]
[+ Voice] voiced [Coronal] alveolar ridge to palate [θ, ð,
[- Voice] voiceless s, z, t, d, š, ž, n, r, l]
[+ Spread Glottis] aspirated [pʰ , tʰ , [+ Anterior] interdentals and true
kʰ ] alveolars
[- Spread Glottis] unaspirated [- Anterior] retroflex and palatals [š, ž,
[+ Constricted Glottis] ejectives, č, ǰ , j]
implosives [Dorsal] from velum back [k, g, ŋ]
[- Constricted Glottis] everything else [Glottal] in larynx [h, ʔ ]
Manner Features Vowels
[+ Continuant] fricatives [f, v, s, z, š, ž, Height [± high] [± low]
θ, ð] Backness [± back]
[- Continuant] stops [p, b, t, d, k, g, Lip Rounding [± round]
ʔ ] Tenseness [± tense]

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[+ Nasal] nasal consonants [m, n, ŋ]
[- Nasal] all oral consonants

Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concerned with the production,
audition and perception of speech sounds (called phones), phonology describes
the way sounds function within a given language and operates at the level of
sound systems and abstract sound units. Knowing the sounds of a language is
only a small part of phonology. This importance is shown by the fact that you
can change one word into another by simply changing one sound. Consider the
differences between the words time and dime. The words are identical except for
the first sound. [t] and [d] can therefore distinguish words, and are called
contrasting sounds. They are distinctive sounds in English, and all distinctive
sounds are classified as phonemes.

Minimal Pairs
Minimal pairs are words with different meanings that have the same sounds
except for one. These contrasting sounds can either be consonants or vowels.
The words pin and bin are minimal pairs because they are exactly the same
except for the first sound. The words read and rude are also exactly the same
except for the vowel sound. The examples from above, time and dime, are also
minimal pairs. In effect, words with one contrastive sound are minimal pairs.
Another feature of minimal pairs is overlapping distribution. Sounds that occur in
phonetic environments that are identical are said to be in overlapping
distribution. The sounds of [ɪ n] from pin and bin are in overlapping distribution
because they occur in both words. The same is true for three and through. The
sounds of [θr] is in overlapping distribution because they occur in both words as
well.

Free Variation
Some words in English are pronounced differently by different speakers. This is
most noticeable among American English speakers and British English speakers,
as well as dialectal differences. This is evidenced in the ways neither, for
example, can be pronounced. American English pronunciation is [niðər], while
British English pronunciation is [najðər].

Phones and Allophones
Phonemes are not physical sounds. They are abstract mental representations of
the phonological units of a language. Phones are considered to be any single

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speech sound of which phonemes are made. Phonemes are a family of phones
regarded as a single sound and represented by the same symbol. The different

phones that are the realization of a phoneme are called allophones of that
phoneme. The use of allophones is not random, but rule-governed. No one is
taught these rules as they are learned subconsciously when the native language

] are
allophones of the phoneme /ɪ /.

Complementary Distribution
If two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, they are said to be in
complementary distribution. These sounds cannot occur in minimal pairs and
they cannot change the meaning of otherwise identical words. If you interchange
the sounds, you will only change the pronunciation of the words, not the
meaning. Native speakers of the language regard the two allophones as
variations of the same sound. To hear this, start to say the word cool (your lips
should be pursed in anticipation of /u/ sound), but then say kill instead (with
your lips still pursed.) Your pronunciation of kill should sound strange because
cool and kill are pronounced with different allophones of the phoneme /k/.
Nasalized vowels are allophones of the

]. Yet in French, nasalized vowels are not allophones
of the same phonemes. They are separate phonemes. The words beau [bo] and
] are not in complementary distribution because they are minimal pairs
and have contrasting sounds. Changing the sounds changes the meaning of the
words. This is just one example of differences between languages.

Phonological Rules
Assimilation: sounds become more like neighboring sounds, allowing for
ease of articulation or pronunciation; such as vowels are
nasalized before nasal consonants.
Harmony: non-adjacent vowels become more similar by sharing a
feature or set of features (common in Finnish)
Gemination: sound becomes identical to an adjacent sound
Regressive Assimilation: sound on left is the target, and sound on right
is the trigger.Dissimilation: sounds become less like neighboring

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sounds; these rules are quite rare, but

one example in English is [fɪ fθ] becoming [fɪ ft] (/f/
and /θ/ are both fricatives, but /t/ is a stop)
Epenthesis: insertion of a sound, e.g. Latin "homre" became
Spanish "hombre"
Prothesis: insertion of vowel sound at beginning of word
Anaptyxis: vowel sound with predictable quality is inserted word-
internally
Paragoge: insertion of vowel sound at end of word
Excrescence: consonant sound inserted between other consonants
(also called stop-intrusion)
Deletion: deletion of a sound; e.g. French word-final
consonants are deleted when the next word begins
with a consonant (but are retained when the
following word begins with a vowel)
Aphaeresis: vowel sound deleted at beginning of word.
Syncope: vowel sound is deleted word-internally.
Apocope: vowel sound deleted at end of word.
Metathesis: reordering of phonemes; in some dialects of English,
the word asked is pronounced [æks]; children's
speech shows many cases of metathesis such as
aminal for animal.
Lenition: consonant changes to a weaker manner of
articulation; voiced stopbecomes a fricative, fricative
becomes a glide, etc.
Palatalization: sound becomes palatal when adjacent to a front
vowel
Compensatory Lengthening: sound becomes long as a result of
sound loss, e.g. Latin "octo" became
Italian "otto"

Assimilation in English

An interesting observation of assimilation rules is evidenced in the formation of
plurals and the past tense in English. When pluralizing nouns, the last letter is
pronounced as either [s], [z], or [əz]. When forming past tenses of verbs, the -
ed ending is pronounced as either [t], [d], [əd].

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If you were to sort words into three columns, you would be able to tell why
certain words are followed by certain sounds:

Plural nouns Hopefully, you can determine which consonants
/s/ /z/ /əz/ produce which sounds. In the nouns, /s/ is added
cats dads churches after voiceless consonants, and /z/ is added after
voiced consonants. /əz/ is added after sibilants. For
tips bibs kisses
the verbs, /t/ is added after voiceless consonants,
laughs dogs judges and /d/ is added after voiced consonants. /əd/ is
Past Tense added after alveolar stops. The great thing about
this is that no one ever taught you this in school.
/t/ /d/ /əd/
But thanks to linguistics, you now know why there
kissed loved patted are different sounds (because of assimilation rules,
washed jogged waded the consonants become more like their neighboring
coughed teased seeded consonants.)

Writing Rules

A general phonological rule is A → B / D __ E (said: A becomes B when it occurs
between D and E) Other symbols in rule writing include: C = any obstruent, V =
any vowel, Ø = nothing, # = word boundary, ( ) = optional, and { } = either/or.
A deletion rule is A → Ø / E __ (A is deleted when it occurs after E) and an
insertion rule is Ø → A / E __ (A is inserted when it occurs after E).
Alpha notation is used to collapse similar assimilation rules into one. C → [Α
voice] / __ [Α voice] (An obstruent becomes voiced when it occurs before a
voiced obstruent AND an obstruent becomes voiceless when it occurs before a
voiceless obstruent.) Similarly, it can be used for dissimilation rules too. C → [-Α
voice] / __ [Α voice] (An obstruent becomes voiced when it occurs before a
voiceless obstruent AND an obstruent becomes voiceless when it occurs before a
voiced obstruent.) Gemination rules are written as C1C2 → C2C2 (for example,
pd→dd)

Syllable Structure

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There are three peaks to a syllable: nucleus (vowel), onset (consonant before
nucleus) and coda (consonant after nucleus.) The onset and coda are both

optional, meaning that a syllable could contain a vowel and nothing else. The
nucleus is required in every syllable by definition. The order of the peaks is
always onset - nucleus - coda. All languages permit open syllables (Consonant +
Vowel), but not all languages allow closed syllables (Consonant + Vowel +
Consonant). Languages that only allow open syllables are called CV languages.
In addition to not allowing codas, some CV languages also have constraints on
the number of consonants allowed in the onset.

The sonority profile dictates that sonority must rise to the nucleus and fall to the
coda in every language. The sonority scale (from most to least sonorous) is
vowels - glides - liquids - nasals - obstruents. Sonority must rise in the onset, but
the sounds cannot be adjacent to or share a place of articulation (except [s] in
English) nor can there be more than two consonants in the onset. This explains
why English allows some consonant combinations, but not others. For example,
price [prajs] is a well-formed syllable and word because the sonority rises in the
onset (p, an obstruent, is less sonorous than r, a liquid); however, rpice [rpajs] is
not a syllable in English because the sonority does not rise in the onset.

The Maximality Condition states that onsets are as large as possible up to the
well-formedness rules of a language. Onsets are always preferred over codas
when syllabifying words. There are also constraints that state the maximum
number of consonants between two vowels is four; onsets and codas have two
consonants maximally; and onsets and codas can be bigger only at the edges of
words.

PART FOUR: SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS

Semantics
Lexical semantics is concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning of
relationships among words, while phrasal semantics is concerned with the
meaning of syntactic units larger than the word. Pragmatics is the study of how
context affects meaning, such as how sentences are interpreted in certain
situations.

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Semantic properties are the components of meanings of words. For example, the
semantic property "human" can be found in many words such as parent, doctor,

baby, professor, widow, and aunt. Other semantic properties include animate
objects, male, female, countable items and non-countable items.

The –nyms
Homonyms: different words that are pronounced the same, but may or may not
be spelled the same (to, two, and too)
Polysemous: word that has multiple meanings that are related conceptually or
historically (bear can mean to tolerate or to carry or to support)
Homograph: different words that are spelled identically and possibly pronounced
the same; if they are pronounced the same, they are also
homonyms (pen can mean writing utensil or cage)
Heteronym: homographs that are pronounced differently (dove the bird and
dove the past tense of dive)
Synonym: words that mean the same but sound different (couch and sofa)
Antonym: words that are opposite in meaning.
Complementary pairs: alive and dead
Gradable pairs: big and small (no absolute scale)
Hyponym: set of related words (red, white, yellow, blue are all hyponyms of
"color")
Metonym: word used in place of another to convey the same meaning (jock
used for athlete, Washington used for American government,
crown used for monarchy)
Retronym: expressions that are no longer redundant (silent movie used to be
redundant because a long time ago, all movies were silent, but this
is no longer true or redundant)

Thematic Roles
Thematic roles are the semantic relationships between the verbs and noun
phrases of sentences. The following chart shows the thematic roles in
relationship to verbs of sentences:

Thematic
Description Example
Role
Agent the one who performs an action Maria ran

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the person or thing that undergoes an
Theme Mary called John
action

Location the place where an action takes place It rains in Spain
Put the cat on the
Goal the place to which an action is directed
porch
the place from which an action He flew from
Source
originates Chicago to LA
the means by which an action is He cuts his hair
Instrument
performed with scissors
She heard Bob
Experiencer one who perceives something
play the piano
The wind
Causative a natural force that causes a change destroyed the
house
The tail of the cat
Possessor one who has something
got caught
Recipient one who receives something I gave it to the girl

Sentential Meaning
The meaning of sentences is built from the meaning of noun phrases and verbs.
Sentences contain truth conditions if the circumstances in the sentence are true.
Paraphrases are two sentences with the same truth conditions, despite subtle
differences in structure and emphasis. The ball was kicked by the boy is a
paraphrase of the sentence the boy kicked the ball, but they have the same truth
conditions - that a boy kicked a ball. Sometimes the truth of one sentence entails
or implies the truth of another sentence. This is called entailment and the
opposite of this is called contradiction, where one sentence implies the falseness
of another. He was assassinated entails that he is dead. He was assassinated
contradicts with the statement he is alive.

Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the interpretation of linguistic meaning in context. Linguistic
context is discourse that precedes a sentence to be interpreted and situational
context is knowledge about the world. In the following sentences, the kids have

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eaten already and surprisingly, they are hungry, the linguistic context helps to
interpret the second sentence depending on what the first sentence says.

Maxims of Conversation
Grice's maxims for conversation are conventionsof speech such as the maxim of
quantity that states a speaker should be as informative as is required and
neither more nor less. The maxim of relevance essentially states a speaker
should stay on the topic, and the maxim of manner states the speaker should
be brief and orderly, and avoid ambiguity. The fourth maxim, the maxim of
quality, states that a speaker should not lie or make any unsupported claims.

Performative Sentences
In these types of sentences, the speaker is the subject who, by uttering the
sentence, is accomplishing some additional action, such as daring, resigning, or
nominating. These sentences are all affirmative, declarative and in the present
tense. An informal test to see whether a sentence is performative or not is to
insert the words I hereby before the verb.I hereby challenge you to a match or I
hereby fine you $500 are both performative, but I hereby know that girl is not.
Other performative verbs are bet, promise, pronounce, bequeath, swear, testify,
and dismiss.

Presuppositions
These are implicit assumptions required to make a sentence meaningful.
Sentences that contain presuppositions are not allowed in court because
accepting the validity of the statement mean accepting the presuppositions as
well. Have you stopped stealing cars?is not admissible in court because no
matter how the defendant answers, the presupposition that he steals cars
already will be acknowledged. Have you stopped smoking?Implies that you
smoke already.

Deixis
Deixis is reference to a person, object, or event which relies on the situational
context. First and second person pronouns such as my, mine, you, your, yours,
we, ours and us are always deictic because their reference is entirely dependent
on context. Demonstrative articles like this, that, these and those and
expressions of time and place are always deictic as well. In order to understand
what specific times or places such expressions refer to, we also need to know
when or where the utterance was said. If someone says "I'm over here!" you

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would need to know who "I" referred to, as well as where "here" is. Deixis marks
one of the boundaries of semantics and pragmatics.

PART FIVE: NEUROLINGUISTICS

The human brain consists of 10 billion nerve cells (neurons) and billions of fibers
that connect them. These neurons or gray matter form the cortex, the surface
of the brain, and the connecting fibers or white matter form the interior of the
brain. The brain is divided into two hemispheres, the left and right cerebral
hemispheres. These hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum. In
general, the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body and
vice versa.

The auditory cortex receives and interprets auditory stimuli, while the visual
cortex receives and interprets visual stimuli. The angular gyrus converts the
auditory stimuli to visual stimuli and vice versa. The motor cortex signals the
muscles to move when we want to talk and is directed by Broca's area. The
nerve fiber connecting Wernicke's and Broca's area is called the arcuate
fasciculus.

Lateralization refers to any cognitive functions that are localized to one side of
the brain or the other. Language is said to be lateralized and processed in the
left hemisphere of the brain. Paul Broca first related language to the left side of
the brain when he noted that damage to the front part of the left hemisphere
(now called Broca's area) resulted in a loss of speech, while damage to the
right side did not. He determined this through autopsies of patients who had
acquired language deficits following brain injuries. A language disorder that
follows a brain lesion is called aphasia, and patients with damage to Broca's
area have slow and labored speech, loss of function words, and poor word order,
yet good comprehension.

Carl Wernicke also used studies of autopsies to describe another type of aphasia
that resulted from lesions in the back portion of the left hemisphere (now called
Wernicke's area.) Unlike Broca's patients, Wernicke's spoke fluently and with
good pronunciation, but with many lexical errors and a difficulty in
comprehension. Broca's and Wernicke's area are the two main regions of the
cortex of the brain related to language processing.

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Aphasics can suffer from anomia, jargon aphasia, and acquired dyslexia.
Anomia is commonly referred to as "tip of the tongue" phenomenon and many

aphasics experience word finding difficulty on a regular basis. Jargon aphasia
results in the substitution of one word or sound for another. Some aphasics may
substitute similar words for each other, such as table for chair, or they may
substitute completely unrelated words, such as chair for engine. Others may
pronounce table as sable, substituting an s sound for a t sound. Aphasics who
became dyslexic after brain damage are called acquired dyslexics. When reading
aloud words printed on cards, the patients produced the following substitutions:

Stimuli Response One Response Two
Act Play Play
South East West
Medicine
Heal Pain

The substitution of phonologically similar words, such as pool and tool, also
provides evidence that a human's mental lexicon is organized by both phonology
and semantics.

Broca's aphasics and some acquired dyslexics are unable to read function words,
and when presented with them on the cards, the patients say no, as shown in
the following example:

Stimuli One Response Stimuli Two Response
Witch Witch Which no!
Hour Time Our no!
Wood Wood Would no!

The patient's errors suggest our mental dictionary is further organized into parts
consisting of major content words (first stimuli) and grammatical words (second
stimuli.)

In addition, split-brain patients (those who have had their corpus callosum
severed) provide evidence for language lateralization. If an object is placed in
the left hand of split-brain patient whose vision is cut off, the person cannot

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name the object, but will know how to use it. The information is sent to the right
side of the brain, but cannot be relayed to the left side for linguistic naming.

However, if the object is placed in the person's right hand, the person can
immediately name it because the information is sent directly to the left
hemisphere.

Dichotic listening is another experimental technique, using auditory signals.
Subjects hear a different sound in each ear, such as boy in the left ear and girl in
the right ear or water rushing in the left ear and a horn honking in the right ear.
When asked to state what they heard in each ear, subjects are more frequently
correct in reporting linguistic stimuli in the right ear (girl) and nonverbal stimuli
in the left ear (water rushing.) This is because the left side of the brain is
specialized for language and a word heard in the right ear will transfer directly to
the left side of the body because of the contralateralization of the brain.
Furthermore, the right side of the brain is specialized for nonverbal stimuli, such
as music and environmental sounds, and a noise heard in the left ear will
transfer directly to the right side of the brain.

PART SIX: CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND SECOND LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION

Linguistic competence develops in stages, from babbling to one word to two
word, then telegraphic speech. Babbling is now considered the earliest form of
language acquisition because infants will produce sounds based on what
language input they receive. One word sentences (holophrastic speech) are
generally monosyllabic in consonant-vowel clusters. During two word stage,
there are no syntactic or morphological markers, no inflections for plural or past
tense, and pronouns are rare, but the intonation contour extends over the whole
utterance. Telegraphic speech lacks function words and only carries the open
class content words, so that the sentences sound like a telegram.

Three theories
The three theories of language acquisition: imitation, reinforcement and
analogy, do not explain very well how children acquire language. Imitation does
not work because children produce sentences never heard before, such as "cat
stand up table." Even when they try to imitate adult speech, children cannot
generate the same sentences because of their limited grammar. And children

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who are unable to speak still learn and understand the language, so that when
they overcome their speech impairment they immediately begin speaking the

language. Reinforcement also does not work because it actually seldomly occurs
and when it does, the reinforcement is correcting pronunciation or truthfulness,
and not grammar. A sentence such as "apples are purple" would be corrected
more often because it is not true, as compared to a sentence such as "apples is
red" regardless of the grammar. Analogy also cannot explain language
acquisition. Analogy involves the formation of sentences or phrases by using
other sentences as samples. If a child hears the sentence, "I painted a red barn,"
he can say, by analogy, "I painted a blue barn." Yet if he hears the sentence, "I
painted a barn red," he cannot say "I saw a barn red." The analogy did not work
this time, and this is not a sentence of English.

Acquisitions
Phonology: A child's error in pronunciation is not random, but rule-governed.
Typical phonological rules include: consonant cluster simplification (spoon
becomes poon), devoicing of final consonants (dog becomes dok), voicing of
initial consonants (truck becomes druck), and consonant harmony (doggy
becomes goggy, or big becomes gig.)

Morphology: An overgeneralization of constructed rules is shown when children
treat irregular verbs and nouns as regular. Instead of went as the past tense of
go, children use goed because the regular verbs add an -ed ending to form the
past tense. Similarly, children use gooses as the plural of goose instead of geese,
because regular nouns add an -s in the plural.

The "Innateness Hypothesis" of child language acquisition, proposed by
Noam Chomsky, states that the human species is prewired to acquire language,
and that the kind of language is also determined. Many factors have led to this
hypothesis such as the ease and rapidity of language acquisition despite
impoverished input as well as the uniformity of languages. All children will learn
a language, and children will also learn more than one language if they are
exposed to it. Children follow the same general stages when learning a language,
although the linguistic input is widely varied.

The poverty of the stimulus states that children seem to learn or know the
aspects of grammar for which they receive no information. In addition, children

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do not produce sentences that could not be sentences in some human language.
The principles of Universal Grammar underlie the specific grammars of all

languages and determine the class of languages that can be acquired
unconsciously without instruction. It is the genetically determined faculty of the
left hemisphere, and there is little doubt that the brain is specially equipped for
acquisition of human language.

The "Critical Age Hypothesis" suggests that there is a critical age for
language acquisition without the need for special teaching or learning. During
this critical period, language learning proceeds quickly and easily. After this
period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult, and for some people, never fully
achieved. Cases of children reared in social isolation have been used for testing
the critical age hypothesis. None of the children who had little human contact
were able to speak any language once reintroduced into society. Even the
children who received linguistic input after being reintroduced to society were
unable to fully develop language skills. These cases of isolated children, and of
deaf children, show that humans cannot fully acquire any language to which they
are exposed unless they are within the critical age. Beyond this age, humans are
unable to acquire much of syntax and inflectional morphology.

Second Language Acquisition Teaching Methods
Grammar-translation: The student memorizes words, inflected words, and
syntactic rules and uses them to translate from native
to target language and vice versa; most commonly
used method in schools because it does not require
teacher to be fluent; however, least effective method
of teaching.
Direct method: The native language is not used at all in the
classroom, and the student must learn the new
language without formal instruction; based on
theories of first language acquisition.
Audio-lingual: Heavy use of dialogs and audio, based on the
assumption that language learning is acquired mainly
through imitation, repetition, and reinforcement;
influenced by psychology.

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Natural Approach: Emphasis on vocabulary and not grammar; focus on
meaning, not form; use of authentic materials instead
of textbook

Silent Way: Teachers remain passive observers while students
learn, which is a process of personal growth; no
grammatical explanation or modeling by the teacher.
Total Physical Response: Students play active role as listener and performer,
must respond to imperative drills with physical action.
Suggestopedia: Students always remain comfortable and relaxed and
learn through memorization of meaningful texts,
although the goal is understanding
Community Language Learning: Materials are developed as course progresses
and teacher understands what students need
and want to learn; learning involves the whole
person and language is seen as more than just
communication.
Community Language Teaching: Incorporates all components of language and
helps students with various learning styles; use
of communication-based activities with
authentic materials, needs of learner are taken
into consideration when planning topics and
objectives.

Four skill areas
The four skill areas of learning a foreign language need to be addressed
consistently and continually. Good lesson plans incorporate all four: Listening,
Speaking, Reading (and Vocabulary), and Writing (and Grammar).
Native speakers do not learn the skill areas separately, nor do they use them
separately, so they shouldn’t be taught separately. However, it is easy to fall into
the trap of teaching about the language, instead of actually teaching the
language. Most textbooks resort to teaching grammar and vocabulary lists and
nothing more.

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PART SEVEN: SOCIOLINGUISTICS

A dialect is a variety of language that is systematically different from other
varieties of the same language. The dialects of a single language are mutually
intelligible, but when the speakers can no longer understand each other, the
dialects become languages. Geographical regions are also considered when
dialects become languages. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are all considered
separate languages because of regular differences in grammar and the countries
in which they are spoken, yet Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes can all
understand one another. Hindi and Urdu are considered mutually intelligible
languages when spoken, yet the writing systems are different. On the other
hand, Mandarin and Cantonese are mutually unintelligible languages when
spoken, yet the writing systems are the same.

A dialect is considered standard if it is used by the upper class, political leaders,
in literature and is taught in schools as the correct form of the language. Overt
prestige refers to this dominant dialect. A non-standard dialect is associated with
covert prestige and is an ethnic or regional dialect of a language. These non-
standard dialects are just as linguistically sophisticated as the standard dialect,
and judgments to the inferiority of them are based on social or racist judgments.
African-American English contains many regular differences of the standard
dialect. These differences are the same as the differences among many of the
world's dialects. Phonological differences include r and l deletion of words like
poor (pa) and all (awe.) Consonant cluster simplification also occurs (passed
pronounced like pass), as well as a loss of interdental fricatives. Syntactic
differences include the double negative and the loss of and habitual use of the
verb "be." He late means he is late now, but he be late means he is always late.

A lingua franca is a major language used in an area where speakers of more
than one language live that permits communication and commerce among them.
English is called the lingua franca of the whole world, while French used to be
the lingua franca of diplomacy.

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A pidgin is a rudimentary language of few lexical items and less complex
grammatical rules based on another language. No one learns a pidgin as a native
language, but children do learn creoles as a first language. Creoles are defined
as pidgins that are adopted by a community as its native tongue.

Besides dialects, speakers may use different styles or registers (such as
contractions) depending on the context. Slang may also be used in speech, but
is not often used in formal situations or writing. Jargon refers to the unique
vocabulary pertaining to a certain area, such as computers or medicine. Words
or expressions referring to certain acts that are forbidden or frowned upon are
considered taboo. These taboo words produce euphemisms, words or phrases
that replace the expressions that are being avoided.

The use of words may indicate a society's attitude toward sex, bodily functions or
religious beliefs, and they may also reflect racism or sexism in a society.
Language itself is not racist or sexist, but the society may be. Such insulting
words may reinforce biased views, and changes in society may be reflected in
the changes in language.

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PART EIGHT: HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Languages that evolve from a common source are genetically related. These
languages were once dialects of the same language. Earlier forms of Germanic
languages, such as German, English, and Swedish were dialects of Proto-
Germanic, while earlier forms of Romance languages, such as Spanish, French,
and Italian were dialects of Latin. Furthermore, earlier forms of Proto-Germanic
and Latin were once dialects of Indo-European.

Linguistic changes like sound shift are found in the history of all languages, as
evidenced by the regular sound correspondences that exist between different
stages of the same language, different dialects, and different languages. Words,
morphemes, and phonemes may be altered, added or lost. The meaning of
words may broaden, narrow or shift. New words may be introduced into a
language by borrowing, or by coinage, blends and acronyms. The lexicon may
also shrink as older words become obsolete.

Change comes about as a result of the restructuring of grammar by children
learning the language. Grammars seem to become simple and regular, but these
simplifications may be compensated for by more complexities. Sound changes
can occur because of assimilation, a process of ease of articulation. Some
grammatical changes are analogic changes, generalizations that lead to more
regularity, such as sweeped instead of swept.

The study of linguistic change is called historical and comparative linguistics.
Linguists identify regular sound correspondences using the comparative method
among the cognates (words that developed from the same ancestral language)
of related languages. They can restructure an earlier protolanguage and this
allows linguists to determine the history of a language family.

Old English, Middle English, Modern English
Old English 499-1066 CE Beowulf
Middle English 1066-1500 CE Canterbury Tales

29


Modern English 1500-present Shakespeare

Phonological change: Between 1400 and 1600 CE, the Great Vowel Shift
took place. The seven long vowels of Middle English
underwent changes. The high vowels [i] and [u]
became the diphthongs [aj] and [aw]. The long
vowels increased tongue height and shifted upward,
and [a] was fronted. Many of the spelling
inconsistencies of English are because of the Great
Vowel Shift. Our spelling system still reflects the way
words were pronounced before the shift took place.
Morphological change: Many Indo-European languages had extensive case
endings that governed word order, but these are no
longer found in Romance languages or English.
Although pronouns still show a trace of the case
system (he vs. him), English uses prepositions to
show the case. Instead of the dative case (indirect
objects), English usually the words to or for. Instead
of the genitive case, English uses the word ofor 's
after a noun to show possession. Other cases include
the nominative (subject pronouns), accusative (direct
objects), and vocative.
Syntactic change: Because of the lack of the case system, word order
has become more rigid and strict in Modern English.
Now it is strictly Subject - Verb - Object order.
Orthographic change: Consonant clusters have become simplified, such as
hlaf becoming loaf and hnecca becoming neck.
However, some of these clusters are still written, but
are no longer pronounced, such as gnaw, write, and
dumb.
Lexical change: Old English borrowed place names from Celtic, army,
religious and educational words from Latin, and
everyday words from Scandinavian. Angle and Saxon
(German dialects) form the basis of Old English
phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon.

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PART NINE: CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES

Indo-European family of languages
Italic (Latin)
o Romance
 Catalan
 French
 Italian
 Occitan (Provençal)
 Portuguese
 Rhaeto-Romansch
 Romanian
 Spanish
Germanic
o North Germanic
 Danish
 Faroese
 Icelandic
 Norwegian
 Swedish
o East Germanic
 Gothic (extinct)
o West Germanic
 Afrikaans
 Dutch
 English
 Flemish
 Frisian
 German
 Yiddish
Slavic
o Western
 Czech
 Polish

31


 Slovak
 Sorbian
o Eastern
 Belarusian
 Russian
 Ukrainian
o Southern
 Bulgarian
 Croatian
 Macedonian
 Old Church Slavonic
 Serbian
 Slovene
Baltic
o Latvian
o Lithuanian
o Old Prussian (extinct)
Celtic
o Brythonic
 Breton
 Cornish (extinct)
 Gaulish (extinct)
 Welsh
o Goidelic
 Irish
 Manx Gaelic (extinct)
 Scots Gaelic
Hellenic (Greek)
Albanian
Armenian
Anatolian (extinct)
Tocharian (extinct)
Indo-Iranian
o Indo-Aryan (Indic)
 Assamese
 Bengali
 Bihari
 Gujarati

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 Hindi-Urdu
 Marathi
 Punjabi
 Romani
 Sanskrit
 Sindhi
 Singhalese
o Iranian
 Avestan
 Balochi
 Farsi (Persian)
 Kurdish
 Pashtu (Afghan)
 Sogdian

Uralic (or Finno-Ugric) is the other major family of languages spoken on the
European continent. Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are examples.

Afro-Asiatic languages are spoken in Northern Africa and the Middle East. They
include Berber, Egyptian, Omotic and Cushitic languages (Somali, Iraqw) as well
as the modern Semitic languages of Hebrew, Arabic and Amharic, in addition to
languages spoken in biblical times, such as Aramaic, Akkadian, Babylonian,
Canaanite, and Phoenician.

The Altaic languages are classified as Japanese and Korean, though some
linguists separate these languages into their own groups.

Sino-Tibetan languages include Mandarin, Hakka, Wu, Burmese, Tibetan, and
all of the Chinese "dialects."

Austro-tai languages include Indonesian, Javanese and Thai; while the Asiatic
group includes Vietnamese.

The Dravidian languages of Tamil and Telugu are spoken in southeastern India
and Sri Lanka.

The Caucasian language family consists of 40 different languages, and is
divided into Cartvelian (south Caucasian), North-West Caucasian and North-East

33


Caucasian language groups. Some languages are Georgian, Megrelian, Chechen,
Ingush Avarian, Lezgian and Dargin. These languages are mostly spoken in
Georgia, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Jordan and parts of the Russian federation.

The Niger-Congo family includes most of the African languages. About 1,500
languages belong to this group, including the Bantu languages of Swahili,
Tswana, Xhosa, Zulu, Kikuyu, and Shona. Other languages are Ewe, Mina,
Yoruba, Igbo, Wolof, Kordofanian and Fulfulde.

Other African language groups are Nilo-Saharan, which includes 200 languages
spoken in Central and Eastern Africa; and Khoisan, the click languages of
southern Africa. The Khoisan group only contains about 30 languages, most of
which are spoken in Namibia and Botswana.

The Austronesian family also contains about 900 languages, spoken all over
the globe. Hawaiian, Maori, Tagalog, and Malay are all representatives of this
language family.

Many languages are, or were, spoken in North and South America by the native
peoples before the European conquests. Knowledge of these languages is
limited, and because many of the languages are approaching extinction, linguists
have little hope of achieving a complete understanding of the Amerindian
language families.

34


Linguistics 101: Introduction to Linguistics I - Fall 1996
Anthony Kroch
614 Williams Hall
898-3212
kroch@change.ling.upenn.edu

Linguistics 101 is an introduction to linguistics from the point of view of its logical
and mathematical foundations. Its goal is to teach the basic structural properties
of natural language sentences in their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects,
as well as the elements of automata theory and logic needed to describe natural
language precisely. The course begins with a discussion of the philosophical and
psychological foundations of modern linguistics and moves from there to more
technical matters.

Linguistics 101 has no prerequisites and fulfills the formal reasoning requirement
in SAS. It is also a basic part of the Linguistics major and of the interdisciplinary
Cognitive Science minor. Related courses are Linguistics 150: Introduction to
Syntax and Linguistics 105: Introduction to Cognitive Science.

Fall 1996 Course Syllabus
Instructor: Teaching Assistants:
Anthony Kroch Alan Lee &Rashmi Prasad
614 Williams Hall 429 Williams Hall
898-3212 898-6050
Email addresses:
kroch@change.ling.upenn.edu
aleewk@babel.ling
rjprasad@babel.ling

Texts: 1. Steven Pinker. The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow.
2. Course Bulkpack.

35


This course will introduce you to linguistics, one of the core disciplines of the
modern science of mind, from a mathematical point of view. Linguistics is a new
science, less than a century old; but we have learned much in this brief period of

scientific study about the uniquely human capacity to code abstract thought in
communicable form. In the course of this semester, we will explore some of the
results obtained in the scientific investigation of language, especially what has
been discovered regarding the formal structure of our linguistic capacities and
how our biologically endowed language faculty allows us to represent meanings
as structured sequences of words. The course will show you that it is possible to
study human language rigorously and scientifically and that such study leads to a
conception of language quite different from our everyday common-sense notions
of the subject.

Requirements for the course consist of a midterm and a final exam, as well as a
series of homework assignments, roughly one per week through the semester.
The course is organized around an interesting recent book by Steven Pinker
entitled "The Language Instinct." This book is not a textbook but it covers in a
readable way the basic aspects of the study of language. There will also be
readings to supplement the Pinker book, which are available in the course
bulkpack.

Topic 1: Introduction. How can there be a scientific study of language? How
are language and thought related? What grammar is and how we learn it. What
we can learn about language from the study of people who lose it or are kept by
circumstances from acquiring language in the normal way.

Reading: Steven Pinker. The Language Instinct. Chapters 1-3.
Perlmutter. "The Language of the Deaf."
Pullum. "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax."

Topic 2: Formal grammar - the mathematical structure of language.
This section of the course introduces the idea that languages can be analyzed
mathematically. We discuss the relationship between computer languages and
natural human languages and the notion of language complexity. We also
introduce the concept of a phrase structure grammar, which underlies both
computer and natural languages and the notion of a machine that automatically
recognizes and parses sentences.

36


Reading: Michael Sipser. Introduction to the Theory of Computation. Chapters
0-2.

Topic 3: Syntax - the structure of sentences in natural language. This
section will be a focus of the course. Here we will learn how sentences are built
up out of words and why speakers are able to construct sentences of any degree
of complexity with a fixed vocabulary. We will also learn why linguists say that
language is a rule-governed system and what some of the linguistic rules are
that are used in the syntactic description of language. We will see how these
rules determine both the structure of sentences and the conditions under which
strings of words are interpretable as sentences of a language instead of being
meaningless word salad.

Reading: Pinker, chapter 4.

Topic 4: Semantics. What is 'meaning'? Lexical semantics.Truth conditional
semantics.The distinction between sense and reference.Semantic
compositionality.The relationship between syntax and semantics.

Reading: O'Grady, Dobrovolsky and Aronoff. Contemporary Linguistics: an
Introduction. Chapter 6.
Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet. Meaning and Grammar: An
Introduction to Semantics. chapters 1-2.

Topic 5: Pragmatics. How do speakers take account of listeners' knowledge
and beliefs in formulating utterances? What inferences beyond literal meaning
listeners draw from what is said to them. What acts can be performed merely by
speaking. How context determines reference. The communicative effects of using
particular syntactic constructions.

Reading: Finegan and Besnier. Language, Its Structure and Use. chaps. 7, 10.

Topic 6: Language in real time. How do listeners understand what speakers
say? How do speakers convert thought into speech? How psycholinguists study
what goes on inside our heads without looking inside them.

37


Reading: Pinker, Chapters 7-8.
Akmajian et al. Linguistics: an Introduction to Language and
Communication. Chapter 10.
Assignment 1: Grammaticality
This assignment is due at the beginning of the Monday lecture class on
September 16. Be sure to write your TA's name and your recitation day on the
top of your assignment. All future assignments should also be handed in at the
beginning of the Monday lecture class in the week that they are due.
Assignments will be returned in recitation sections, beginning on the Friday after
they are handed in.
1. Prescriptive & Descriptive Grammar
In order to answer this question, you will have to be familiar with some notation
used in linguistics. An asterisk (*) is used to mark sentences which are
ungrammatical. Grammatical sentences are unmarked. Recall that
"ungrammatical" is used in the descriptive sense of interest to linguists, not in
the prescriptive sense. Pinker, whose use of the term we will follow, defines
"grammatical" as "well formed according to consistent rules in the dialect of [a]
speaker..." (p. 31). The dialect we have in mind here is the spoken language of
the general college-educated American population.

(A) Look at the sentences in (1a) and (1b). Why is (1b) ungrammatical?

a. Two paintings are on the wall.
(1)
b. *Two paintings is on the wall

(B) Now consider the sentences in (2). Do the grammaticality judgments
indicated correspond to your own? Assuming the correctness of these
judgments, what rule or rules could a speaker use to generate the grammatical
sentences (2a) and (2c) but not generate the ungrammatical sentence in (2b).
Keep in mind that your rule(s) should also be able to account for the sentences
in

(1). How does your description of the sentences in (1) and (2) differ from
prescriptions that govern standard usage?

(2) a. There are two paintings on the wall.
b. *There is two paintings on the wall

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c. There's two paintings on the wall.

(C) The sentences in (3) show a similar pattern to the pattern seen in (1).
However, the pattern in (4) is different from the one in (2). Write a description
of the rules needed to generate the grammatical sentences in (3) and (4). Your
rules should not generate the ungrammatical sentences.

(3) a. A painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee are hanging on the wall.
b. *A painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee is hanging on the wall

(4) a. *There are a painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee hanging on the
wall
b. There is a painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee hanging on the wall.
c. There's a painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee hanging on the wall.

2. Grammaticality Judgments
(A) Decide whether the phrases in (1) - (15) are grammatical in your spoken
dialect. (If you are not a native speaker of English, consult a native speaker for
judgments). Mark ungrammatical sentences with an asterisk ( * ) and say briefly
what's wrong with them.
(1) To the bank.
(2) The rat the cat the dog bit chased ran.
(3) The cat the dog bit ran.
(4) Being so flat, the Dutch bicycle everywhere.
(5) Who do you wonder whether they will come.
(6) Ivan a tin of caviar ate quickly.
(7) Its mayor praised her village.
(8) If you go to school, there's an elephant on the corner.
(9) Susan told John that washing herself in public is a bad idea.
(10) The candy ate the boy.
(11) Immediately he opened the door he saw the murderer standing there.
(12) The police officer arrested Sam and I.

39


(13) Earlobe seven by hexed fruitless.
(14) Go take dog for a walk!
(15) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

(B) Often it is possible to make sense of an ungrammatical sentence. Likewise a
grammatical sentence can be incomprehensible. Mark the incomprehensible but
grammatical sentences in (A) with a number sign (#).

3. American Sign Language
Read the discussion of deaf sign language in Pinker and the Perlmutter article in
the bulk pack before answering this question.

Sign language users all over the world have been struggling for years to
eradicate the notion that because they do not use speech, their communications
systems are not "real" languages. One characteristic of languages in general is
that there is an arbitrary relation between words and what they represent. You
can't hear the French word 'chien,' for example, and know by its sound that it
refers to what the English word 'dog' refers to. Critics of sign languages have
often described them as "iconic," as a series of pictures and gestures for acting
out the real world -- and thus dismissed them as nothing more than complex
mime. Consider the issue of iconicity in American Sign Language (ASL) in light of
the following evidence.

(A) The signs for male and female:

original:
female: running thumb along jaw toward chin, mimicking bonnet strings
male: grasping an invisible cap near the forehead

current:
female: thumb on chin, with a hand shape as if thumbing your nose at someone
male: thumb on forehead, same handshape.
-- How have these signs changed over time? How does this development affect
the debate over whether signs are iconic or not?

(B) First person pronouns:
When hearing children are first learning to speak, they often display a charming
tendency to confuse the pronouns 'you' and 'me.' When asked, "Do you want

40


milk," they reply, "Yes, you want milk," believing that they are describing
themselves. In a curious parallel, deaf children who are learning to sign will
display, at the same age, the tendency to confuse the signs for 'you' and 'me.'

The adult will point to the child and ask a question, and the child will point at the
adult in reply, even though, once again, these children are describing
themselves.

-- Why do you think children make these mistakes? Based on the assumption
that ASL is a true language, would you expect hearing children (who are not
exposed to ASL) to make the same mistake as deaf children when responding to
pointing? Why or why not?

(C) Character placing:
When telling a story, an ASL signer is likely to name the characters at the
beginning (or whenever they appear) and in doing so, to "place" them at some
location in space (one to the left, and one to the right, for example). From that
point on, the signer will refer to those locations by pointing instead of repeating
the names.

-- Does these rules for pointing remind you of anything in spoken language?

(D) Handshapes:
While fingerspelling is not a grammatical part of ASL, many signs in ASL are
signed with the handshape of the first letter in the English word -- 'language' is
signed with the "l" shape, 'class' with the "c" shape, and 'water' with a "w". The
colors blue, purple, green, orange and yellow are all signed with the same
motion, shaking the initial letter (b, p, g, o, or y) back and forth. 'Apple' is an "a"
shape rotated at cheek level. At the same time, 'onion' is an "x" shape moved
the same way, so this pattern does not always not hold.

-- How do these facts impact upon the iconicity debate?

(E) Iconicity in spoken language:
There are iconic elements in ordinary spoken English. Give some examples. In
what ways are similar to and/or different from iconic features of ASL?

41


Assignment 2: Language, Grammar, and Thought

1.Tongan Syntax
The following (simplified) sentences are from Tongan, a Polynesian language
spoken on the island of Tonga in the Pacific. Each sentence is glossed (directly
translated) and an English translation is also provided. The following
abbreviations are used: Pr=present tense, Pst =past tense, Nom=nominative
case, Acc=accusative case, 1ps=First person singular, 2ps=Second person
singular.
Answer the following questions based on your observations of sentences (1)-(4):
(a) what would you say is the main structural difference between Tongan and
English? (b) how is tense realized in Tongan? (c) are the nouns marked in any
particular way?

(1) oku ui ehe- tamasiae- tangata
Pr call Nom child Acc man
'The child calls the man.'
(2) oku kai ehe- fefine ae- ufi
Pr eat Nom- womanAcc- yam
'The woman eats the yam.'
(3) nae ako ehe- tamasi ae- lesoni
Pst study Nom- child Acc- lesson
'The child studied the lesson.'
(4) nae haka ehe- fefine ae- ika
Pst boil Nom- woman Acc- fish
'The woman boiled the fish.'

How are the following sentences structurally different from the ones above? Also,
why is the 1ps pronoun in (5) different from the one in (8)? Similarly, why is the
2ps in (6) different from the one in (7)?
(5) nae ku ui ae- tangata
Pst 1ps call Acc- man

42


'I called the man.'
(6) oku ke kai ae- laise
Pr 2ps eat Acc- rice
'You eat rice.'

(7) oku manako koe ehe- tangata
Pr like 2ps Nom- man
'The man likes you.'

(8) nae tokonia au ehe- kakai
Pst help 1ps Nom- man
'People helped me.'

If you have adequately analyzed the above sentences, you should now be able
to do some simple translations from English into Tongan! Try translating the
following:

The man scares the child. ('scare' = 'fakailifiai')
The woman saw me. ('see' = 'vakai')
You ate the fish.
You like me.

2. TheRelationship betweenLanguage andThought.
It is by now a well known fact (and those of you who have tried to learn a
foreign language will undoubtedly admit this) that certain things can be
expressed more conveniently in some languages than in others. While one
language may have a special word to refer exclusively to a particular object or
notion, in another language this object or notion can be described only by using
a whole phrase or sentence. For example, in Tuvaluan, a language spoken by the
Polynesian inhabitants of a group of islands in the Central Pacific, there are
different words to refer to many different types of coconut, which need to be
described at great length in English. Here are a few examples:
pii : drinking coconut, with little flesh and much water, at a stage when the
water is maximally sweet
mukomuko: young coconut with some flesh in it, before it has become too solid
uto : coconut at the stage when its husk can be chewed on and its water
is still sweet
motomoto : same as mukomuko, but with firmer flesh

43


niu : coconut ripe enough for its flesh to be grated
uttanu : mature coconut whose sprout has already pierced through the husk
and whose water has turned into an edible spongious solid kernel

How much can we conclude from examples like this one about the relationship
between the language that people speak and the way that they think? Do
examples like this one support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?.

3. Grammar of Non-Standard English
Study the following three groups of sentences of Appalachian English. The
sentences of each group share a grammatical feature not found in Standard
English. Describe these features.
(1) Boy, I started to runnin'.
A vein in his nose bursted and he went to hemorragin'.
She practically raised 'im 'til he got up to walkin'.
Just recently, I had an aunt to come from Texas.
Usually, I hafta have somebody else to do it.
(note: 'went' and 'got' is roughly the equivalent of Standard English's
'started')
(2) I'd go out and cut me a limb off a tree, get me a good straight one.
We had us a cabin, built us a log cabin back over there.
And then you'd get you a bowl of ice water.
He wanted some straw to build him a house out of.
I'm gonna write me a letter to the President.
(3) I got some kin people lived up there.
He's the funny lookin' character plays baseball.
'Cause there was this vampire that killed people come in the house.
My grandma's got this thing tells me about when to plant.

4. Two puzzles
(a). Included in your bulkpack there is an excerpt from an interview with
Miss Manners. What point relevant to a linguistics course does she make
in her discussion of ettiquette books?
(b). Right after the Miss Manners interview there is a page with a
Domino's Pizza advertisement. Why do you think this page was included in the
course bulkpack?

44


Assignment 3: Sentences as Structured Objects

1.Expressivity of Language
Consider the following sentences :

a) I hate war.
b) You know that I hate war.
c) He says that you know that I hate war.
Construct a sentence that includes sentence (c) and then construct another
sentence that includes your new sentence. Can you repeat the process again to
create an even longer sentence? How long do you think you can go on? Why?

2. Structural Ambiguity
Our syntactic knowledge goes beyond our ability to decide which strings are
grammatical and which are not. It accounts for the structural ambiguity of
expressions like synthetic buffalo hides. The ambiguity results from the fact that
synthetic can modify buffalo hides or simply hides to result in two different
interpretations. It is therefore due to the syntactic structure that the expression
has two meanings and not due to any ambiguous words. Paraphrase each of the
following sentences in two different ways to show that you understand the
ambiguity involved :
a) Smoking grass can be nauseating.
b) Rob finally decided on the boat.
c) Old men and women are hard to live with.
d) That sheepdog is too hairy to eat.
e) Terry loves his wife and so do I.
f) They said she would go yesterday.

Is the type of ambiguity in the above sentences different from the ambiguity in
the following sentences :
g) I walked by the bank yesterday.
h) Thomas Jefferson ate his cottage cheese with relish.

3. Mathematical exercises
Do exercises 3, 4, and 8 on page 24 at the end of chapter 0 of Sipser.

45


Assignment 4: Mathematical preliminaries

A.Alphabets, Strings and Languages
Let be the alphabet containing the symbols a and b. In other words: = {a, b}.
A language L contains all strings over which either begin with a and end with b,

or begin with b and end with a. State which of the following strings belong to L,
and which do not:
i) ab
ii) baa
iii) abba
iv) baba
v) bubba
vi) b

Concatenation is an operation on strings where one string is appended to the
end of another string. For example, if we have two strings xy and yx, we can do
the operation xy o yx (where 'o' is the symbol denoting concatenation) to yield a
new string xyyx. Now, when we concatenate certain strings from the language L,
we get a new string which still belongs to L. For example, the strings aab and
abb are valid strings in L. The operation aab o abb gives us the new string
aababb which still belongs to L (since it starts with an a and ends with ab).
However, the concatenation of two valid strings of L does not always yield a new
string which also belongs to L. Provide some counterexamples of when the
concatenation of two strings of L results in a new string which does NOT belong
to L.

B. Relations and Functions
The above diagram shows the maternal family tree of a certain family. F is the
set containing all the members of this family. Let M be the set containing all
mothers in F. Hence, M = {Eve, Jennifer, Mary, Kate}. Let the relation R = "is
the mother of". The statement mRf, where m is an element of set M and f is an
element of set F, simply says that m is the mother of f. We can show this
relationship diagramatically:

The above diagram shows a normal relation, where an element in the first group
can map onto more than one element in the second group.

46


a) Now, let S be the set containing all sons in F. List the set S.
b) where R = "is the son of", s S, and f F.
c) c) Briefly explain why this relation is a function.
d) d) Let G be the set of siblings in F. List G. Is gRf a function, where R = "is
the sibling of",
e) G, and f F.

C. Finite State Automata
Do Exercises 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4a (on page 75) from Chapter 1 of Sipser.

Assignment 5: Finite State Automata and Regular Grammars

1. Spot the Problem
A language L is described as follows:
L = all strings that begin with a 0, end with a 2, and contain at most three 1s
The alphabet of this language is {0, 1, 2}
a) Give an example of a string in this language which does not contain a 1.
b) Give an example of a string in this language of length 10.
c) Does the following finite state accept the language L? If not, how would you
change it so that it does accept exactly the language L? (Hint: You need to add
an extra state.)

2. Introduction to the trees program.
Download the Trees 2 program by following the instructions on the Trees web
page and the grammars G1, and G2, and G3 . For each of the grammars answer
the following questions.
a) Describe the language generated by the grammar.
b) Draw a finite state automaton that accepts the same language.

Assignment 6: More Machines and Grammars

1.More Finite Automata
Consider a finite automata whose input alphabet is S = {the, old, man, men, is,
are, here, and}.
a) Construct a state diagram for an automaton which accepts the following
language: {the man is here, the men are here}.

47

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