Introduction to Linguistics
(Notes on 2008 Summer Intensive taught by Justin Nuger)
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Disclaimer
Links.
Books read recently.
Best books read.
Harry Potter books.
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The First Word (2007)
by Christine Kenneally.
One of the best books read in 2009.
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Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication
by Adrian Akmajian et al.
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See also:
Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language
by Seth Lerer.
and
The History of the English Language
by Seth Lerer.
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Glossary:
A, B,
C, D,
E, F,
G, H,
I, J,
K, L,
M, N,
O, P,
Q, R,
S, T,
U, V,
W, X,
Y, Z.
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Summary of intensive 10-day Linguistics class:
Day 1;
Day 2;
Day 3;
Day 4;
Day 5;
Day 6;
Day 7;
Day 8;
Day 9;
Day 10.
Morphology.
Timeline of English Language.
Possible Cause of the Great Vowel Shift.
Day 1 (of 10): "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
Linguistics includes:
- Phonetics: articulation of sounds.
- Phonology: organization of sounds.
- Morphology: formation of words (and association of meaning with words).
- Syntax: formation of sentences.
- Semantics: meaning and interpretation of words (lexical semantics)
and a set of words (compositional semantics).
Linguistics:
- Is descriptive, not prescriptive.
- Spelling is not an intrinsic attribute of language.
Nor is punctuation (which has nothing to tell us about language itself),
written aspects of speech,
social correctness of speech,
or
prescriptions of correctness.
Sound is produced in the vocal tract, with adaptation of parts used for other purposes (breathing, eating, etc.).
Words:
- Not all words are 'good': phonological constraints make some words questionable.
- But many sequences of sounds that we have not previously heard are 'phonotactically' good.
Likewise with sentences:
- Not all sequences of known words are 'good' sentences.
- But you don't have to pre-know every sentence you experience:
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While this sentence is no doubt perfectly comprehensible to you,
it is very likely that you have never seen this acceptably competent
sentence before.
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Grammar: "the mental system that allows human beings
to form and interpret the sounds, words, and sentences of their language".
Properties:
- Generality: all languages have a grammar.
- Parity: all grammars are equal.
None is more primitive.
- e.g. Pidgin (a mixed language, combining the language and grammar of dissimilar languages into a form
understandable to native speakers of both languages).
- e.g. Creole (results from a Pidgin becoming fully grammaticised).
- Universality: grammars are fundamentally alike.
Languages may appear different but they are actually very similar.
- Mutability: grammars are constantly changing.
- Inaccessibility: grammatical knowledge is subconscious.
Often we use a grammatical rule but cannot express the rule conscientiously.
Language samples in this session from:
- English: Modern.
- English: Middle
- Mandarin.
- Walbiri (Warlpiri) from Australia.
Day 2 (of 10): Phonetics
- Phonetic Features.
- Acoustic phonetics.
- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA);
identification of sounds heard in English.
Day 3 (of 10): Phonology
Day 4 (of 10): Phonology
Day 5 (of 10): Morphology
- Phoneme vs. Morpheme
- Inflection
- Derivation
- Zero Morphemes
Day 6 (of 10): Morphology
Day 7 (of 10): Syntax
Completing morphology:
Syntax:
- Constituency
- Adjective, A.
- Adverb, Adv.
- Determiner, D.
- Noun phrase, NP.
- Preposition, P.
- Prepositional Phrase, PP.
- Sentence, S.
- Verb, V.
- Verb Phrase, VP.
- Trees
Midterm Review (Phonetics,
Phonology,
Morphology).
Day 8 (of 10): Syntax
Midterm
Emphasis on Syntax:
- Lexical Entries or Subcategorization Frames.
- Phrase Structure Rules
- Structural Ambiguity
Day 9 (of 10): Semantics
- Conversational Maxims
- Set Theory
Day 10 (of 10)
Final Project Due; Final Project Presentations;
- Linguistics in the big, wide world.
Glossary
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A, B,
C, D,
E, F,
G, H,
I, J,
K, L,
M, N,
O, P,
Q, R,
S, T,
U, V,
W, X,
Y, Z.
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- A.
-
- Acoustic phonetics.
- An approach to
phonetics
that
studies the physical properties of spoken sounds.
Contrast
articulatory phonetics.
- Acronym.
- A new word formed from the first letter(s) of a sequence of existing words;
pronounced as a word (not a sequence of letters).
Contrast with
alphabetic abbreviation.
[AA]
- Affix.
- A
bound morpheme
that is attached to a
stem
in order to modify its meaning (such as the number of a noun or tense of a verb).
[AA]
- Affricate.
- A single-consonant sound comprising a
stop
followed by a secondary
fricative
release at the same
place of articulation.
[AA]
- Allophone. Also called 'phone'.
- A positional variation
or a
free variation
of a
phoneme.
[AA]
Physical event studied in
phonology.
Compare with
phoneme.
- Alphabetic abbreviation.
- A new word formed from the first letter(s) of a sequence of existing words,
but where the new word is pronounced as a sequence of letters.
Contrast with
acronym.
[AA]
- Alveolar.
- Formed by using the tongue tip (or blade)
against the (alveolar) ridge behind the upper teeth;
this constricts (or blocks) airflow.
e.g. at the start of lie or now or see or too.
[AA]
- Alveopalatal.
- Formed by using the tongue tip (or blade)
against mouth roof (palate) just behind the (alveolar) ridge;
this constricts (or blocks) airflow.
e.g. at the start of chip or ship.
[AA]
- Anterior.
- A phoneme formed at the alveolar ridge
or in front of it.
[AA]
- Aphasia.
- Impairment in communication; results from brain damage.
[AA]
- Assimilation.
- Influence of a sound by neighbor(s) to become more similar to the neighbor(s).
- Articulatory phonetics.
- An approach to
phonetics
that
studies the physiological mechanisms of speech production.
properties of those sounds, and how they are interpreted.
Contrast
acoustic phonetics
- Articulation manner.
- Way that airflow is modified in the vocal tract in order to make
a particular sound.
- Articulation point.
- Places where airflow is modified in the vocal tract in order to make
a particular sound. These are the main types of sound heard in English
(Received Pronunciation and Amglish (USA American):
- Labial: sound made with (near-)closure of lips. Bilabials
(e.g., initial 'p', 'b', 'm') and labiodentals (e.g., initial 'f', 'v').
- Dental: sound made with tongue touching or near teeth.
- Interdental: sound made with tongue between teeth
(e.g., initial 'th').
- Alveolar: sound made with tongue touching or near
ridge behind upper front teeth
(e.g., initial 't', 'd', 's', 'z', 'l', 'n').
- Palatal: sound made with tongue touching or near
the high point of the mouth roof
(e.g., initial 'sh', 'ch', 'j').
- Velar: sound made with tongue touching or near
the velum (rear of the mouth roof)
(e.g., initial 'c', 'g', 'j').
- Labiovelar: sound made with tongue raised near
the velum (rear of the mouth roof)
while the lips are rounded
(e.g., initial 'w').
- Glottal: sound made with vocal folds primarily
(e.g., initial 'h').
- Aspiration.
- A puff of air that can follow a
stop
consonant.
e.g. In pill.
[AA]
- B.
-
- Back.
- Description of vowel formed by placing the tongue behind its resting position.
e.g. vowels in (English) boat and boot.
[AA]
Contrast
front.
- Bound morpheme.
- A morpheme
that is not an independent word but must be bound with others.
Includes
affixes
and
stems.
[AA]
- Broca's area.
- Part of the frontal lobe in the brain's left hemisphere.
If damaged, one's speech lacks fluency.
[AA]
- C.
-
- Complementary distribution.
- Two speech sounds occur in one or more positions where the other never does.
If two such sounds are phonetically similar,
they are usually
allophones
of the same
phoneme.
[AA]
- Consonant.
- Sound made with momentarily blocked or extremely narrowed vocal tract.
May be
voiced
or
unvoiced.
- Conversational maxims.
- Grice's principles of:
- Manner
- Quality
- Quantity
- Relevance
that are followed in co-operative verbal exchanges.
[AA]
- Creole.
- A language;
developed from a
pidgin
by expanding vocabulary and complexity of grammar.
Has native speakers.
[AA]
- D.
-
- Deep structure (d-structure).
- "The tree, formed by phrase structure rules,
into which words are plugged, in such a way as to satisfy the demands of
the words regarding their neighboring phrases.
...
not the same as
Universal Grammar,
the meaning of a sentence,
or the abstract grammatical relationships underlying a sentence."
[SP]
Contrast
Surface structure (s-structure).
- Deletion.
-
- Dental.
- Formed by a constriction due to the tongue tip (or blade)
at the upper teeth.
[AA]
- Derivation.
-
- In
morphology
the process by which
affixes
combine with stems or words.
Compare
inflection.
- In
syntax
a stage in the generation of a sentence that results from applying a grammar's rules.
Also see zero derivation.
- Diphthong.
- Vowel of two parts: a vowel plus a (quieter) glide.
- Dissimilation.
- Influence of a sound by neighbor(s) to become more different from the neighbor(s).
- E.
-
- Epenthesis.
- Insertion of a segment into a string of segments.
- F.
-
- Flap.
- A consonant formed by a quick tap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth.
More common in American than British English,
e.g. t in better.
[AA]
- Front.
- Description of vowel formed by placing the tongue forward from its resting position.
e.g. vowels in (English) beet and bet.
[AA]
Contrast
back.
- free morpheme.
- A morpheme that is also an independent word.
[AA]
- Free variation.
- A relation between two speech sounds such that either can occur at a particular position;
the substitution of one for the other does not alter the meaning of the word.
Two sounds in free variation are
allophones
of the same
phoneme.
[AA]
- fricative.
- A consonant sound where air is channeled though a narrowed vocal tract,
and becomes turbulent.
[AA]
- function morpheme.
-
- G.
-
- Generative grammar.
- "A set of rules that determines the form and meaning of words and sentences
in a particular language as it is spoken in a community."
[SP]
- Generative linguistics.
- "The school of linguistics, associated with Noam Chomsky, that tries to discover
the
generative grammars
of language and the
universal grammar
underlying them."
[SP]
- Glide.
- Vowel-like in articulation,
but is
consonant-like
in being unable to form the core of a
syllable.
It precedes or follows a true vowel.
E.g.:
Initial glide in yet
and final glide in now.
- Glottal.
- Formed by constricting the vocal cords.
[AA]
- Great Vowel Shift.
- Sound changes in English long (tense) vowels in the fifteenth century.
- Grimm's Laws.
- Sound changes in Proto-Germanic:
- Indo-European voiceless stops became voiceless fricatives.
- Indo-European voiced stops became voiceless stops.
- Indo-European voiced aspirated stops became unaspirated voiced stops.
[AA]
- H.
-
- I.
-
- Inflection.
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- J.
-
- K.
-
- L.
-
- M.
-
- Manner of articulation.
- The type of constriction of the mouth, throat, or larynx
used in the production of speech sounds.
Contrast with
place of articulation.
[AA]
- Metathesis.
- Reorders a sequence of segments.
- Morpheme.
-
A part of a word that cannot be broken down further into a meaningful part.
The smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function.
It can be free
(a word)
or bound.
Types are:
- free morpheme.
- bound morpheme.
- content morpheme.
- function morpheme.
The first two are orthogonal to the second two, resulting in:
| Types of morphemes:
| Content
| Function
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| Free
| Content word
| Function word
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| Bound
| Derivational morpheme
| Inflectional morpheme
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- Morphology.
- Arrangement and interrelationship of
morphemes in words;
the study of such.
- N.
-
- O.
-
- P.
-
- Phase structure.
- "The information about the syntactic categories of the words
in a sentence, how the words are grouped into phrases,
and how the phrases are grouped into larger phrases;
usually diagrammed as a tree."
[SP]
- Phase structure grammar.
- "A
generative grammar
consisting only of rules that define
phase structure."
[SP]
- Phone.
- Allophone.
A speech sound.
- Phoneme.
- Abstract idea studied in
phonology.
Compare with
allophones.
- Phonetics.
- The study of the production of sounds of speech, the
properties of those sounds, and how they are interpreted.
Studied through:
- acoustic phonetics
- articulatory phonetics
- Phonology.
- The study of the distribution of sounds of speech in
a language and how those sounds are organized and interact.
Studies the value of sounds as
phonemes
and
allophones.
- Pidgin.
- A simplified version of some language or combination of languages;
usually developed as a language of trade.
[AA]
- Place of articulation.
- The part of the mouth, throat, or larynx where the airflow
experiences the greatest constriction in the production of speech sounds.
Contrast with
manner of articulation.
[AA]
- Positional variant.
- A phonetic form that occurs in a specific environment.
e.g. The aspirated [ph]
occurs predictably in syllable-initial position
(in English)
is a positional variant of
the phoneme /p/.
[AA]
- Psycholinguist.
- "A scientist, usually a psychologist by training, who studies
how people understand, produce, or learn language."
[SP]
- Q.
-
- R.
-
- Reduplication.
- All or part of a word is copied as a separate morpheme
associated with additional meaning.
e.g. In Marshallese (Marshall Islands), the final C-V-C
of a noun is copied to the end of a noun, forming a verb:
[takin] "sock" ->
[takinkin] "to wear a sock"
Reduplication can use a prefix, suffix, or infix.
The morpheme, shown by /RED/ (for Reduplication),
can have hundreds and hundreds of classes,
but it
does not have a basic sound component
(and in this aspect it has a similarity to zero derivation).
- S.
-
- Semantics.
- The study of the meaning of forms of speech, including the development and
changes of meaning in words and word groups.
- Stem.
- A morpheme that can serve as a base for forming new words by
the addition of affixes.
[AA]
- Stop.
- A consonant sound made by the complete and temporary
blocking of the airflow.
e.g. the start of pin.
[AA]
- Surface structure (s-structure).
- "The phase structure tree formed
when movement transformations are applied to a
Deep structure.
Thanks to
traces,
it contains all the information necessary to determining the meaning
of the sentence. Aside from certain minor adjustments
(executed by 'stylistic' and phonological rules),
it corresponds to the actual order of words that a person utters."
[SP]
Contrast
Deep structure (d-structure).
- Syllable.
- Usually its core is a
vowel,
sonorous,
and produced with a relatively open vocal tract.
It is bounded by less quieter sounds,
usually
consonant,
produced with a narrowed or closed vocal tract.
- syntax.
- The rules for the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences
in a language.
- T.
-
- trace.
- "A silent or 'understood' element in a sentence,
corresponding to the
deep-structure
position of a moved phrase.
What did he put (TRACE) in the garage?
(the trace corresponds to what."
[SP]
- U.
-
- Universal Grammar.
- "The basic design ... [claimed to underlie] the grammars of all human languages;
also refers to the circuitry of children's brains that allows them
to learn the grammar of their parents language."
[SP]
Not the same as
Deep structure (d-structure).
- Unvoiced.
- Compare with
voiced.
- V.
-
- Vowel.
- Sound made with very little obstruction of the tract.
Usually
voiced.
- Voiced.
- Compare with
unvoiced.
- W.
-
- Word.
- The smallest free form found in language.
- X.
-
- Y.
-
- Z.
-
- Zero Derivation.
- Process of using a
Zero Morpheme
- Zero Morpheme.
- A morpheme (represented by 0) without a phonological form.
It's effect is to alter a part of speech, such as,
for the Calvin and Hobbs sentence:
"Verbing weirds language"
changing the noun "verb" to the verb "verb"
(which then receives the suffix -ing to make the gerund "verbing")
or changing the adjective "weird" to the verb "weird".
It does not have a basic sound component
(and in this aspect its use has a similarity to Reduplication).
References for Glossary
AA:
Where noted by [AA],
glossary entries are based in part on those in
Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication
by Adrian Akmajian et al.
SP:
Where noted by [SP],
glossary entries are based in part on those in
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
by Steven Pinker.
This book was recommended additional reading for
(summer intensive) Linguistics Course:
"Anyone contemplating studying linguistics should also read Pinker (1995;
Harper/Perennial) The Language Instinct [ISBN: 0061336467]: it really gives one
an idea of what linguistics is all about" (Justin Nuger, personal communication, 2008).
[Thanks for visiting.]