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

ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE 4SEPT 09, 2013 – DAY 6

Brain & Language

LING 4110-4890-5110-7960

NSCI 4110-4891-6110

Harry Howard

Tulane University

2

Course organization• The syllabus, these slides and my recordings are

available at http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/.• If you want to learn more about EEG and neurolinguistics,

you are welcome to participate in my lab. This is also a good way to get started on an honor's thesis.

09/09/13 Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University

http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/



3

Review• The quiz was the review.


4

ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCEIngram §2: Semantics


5

Thematic roles• What is a thematic role?• Some examples

• John gave Mary a tomato.• John gave a tomato to Mary.• Mary hates tomatoes.• A brilliant idea occurred to Mary.

• Are thematic roles marked in any way in English?• preposition• postposition• case


6

Specificity, reference, and deixis• Articles

• indefinite• a/some: a cat, some cats, some salt• usually for first mention of the thing

• definite• the: the cat, the cats, the salt, the sun• usually for all following mentions & things that are ‘mentioned’ (known)

from context or common knowledge

• Specificity• I am looking for a secretary who speaks Mandarin.

• … if I can find one. > indefinite non-specific• … Her name is Mary. > indefinite specific

• I am looking for the tallest man in the world.• … if I can find him. > definite non-specific• … His name is John. > definite specific


7

Reference• Examples

• John scratched himself.• John scratched him.• John scratched John.


8

Time reference• What is tense?

• Tense places events on a time line.• How many places are there on a time line?

• past < present < future

• What is aspect?• Aspect describes the phases of an event: start, middle, finish

• I am talking.

• What is modality?• Modality describes the likelihood of an event:

• possible (can, may, might, should)• necessary (must, will, shall)


9

Assertion/presupposition• What is assertion/presupposition?


10

ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCEIngram §2: left-overs


11

What are the parts of speech/syntactic categories?• Major/content categories

• noun• verb• adjective• adverb• preposition/postposition?

• Minor/functional categories• determiner: article, quantifier, demonstrative• pronoun• negation• conjunction: coordinating, subordinating• auxiliary verb?

• Interjection


12

Words group to together to form phrases

• What goes before ‘kissed John’ below?• She kissed John.• Mary kissed John.• That girl kissed John.• The tall girl kissed John.• The girl over there kissed John.• A girl that you don’t know kissed John.

• Answer• A word that is ‘nouny’, or a group of words that contain a noun.• Notice: it does not matter which one.• We want a way to generalize over all of these possibilities, and the

infinite number of alternatives that we can think up.• Let’s do this by calling it a noun phrase or NP.


13

Restatement of subject data as NP• An NP goes before ‘kissed John’ below

• [NP She] kissed John.

• [NP Mary] kissed John.

• [NP That girl] kissed John.

• [NP The tall girl] kissed John.

• [NP The girl over there] kissed John.

• [NP A girl that you don’t know] kissed John.


14

Words to phrases 2• What goes after ‘John kissed’ below?

• John kissed her.• John kissed Mary.• John kissed that girl.• John kissed the tall girl.• John kissed the girl over there.• John kissed a girl that you don’t know.

• Answer• The same ‘nouny’ thing as before.• So let’s also call it a NP.


15

Restatement of object data as NP• An NP goes after ‘John kissed’:

• John kissed [NP her].

• John kissed [NP Mary].

• John kissed [NP that girl].

• John kissed [NP the tall girl].

• John kissed [NP the girl over there].

• John kissed [NP a girl that you don’t know].

• Our sentence now looks like this:• NP kissed NP.


16

NPs get around• English treats NPs as units, in the sense that they can

appear in different parts of a sentence:a. Which girl kissed John? ~ Which girl did John kiss __?

b. THAT girl kissed John. ~ THAT girl, John kissed __.

c. Not even Mary kissed John. ~ Not even Mary did John kiss __.

d. That girl is who kissed John. ~ That girl is who John kissed __.

e. Who kissed John is that girl. ~ Who John kissed __ is that girl.


17

More phrases• But it seems to be that ‘kissed NP’ is a unit, too:

1. Kiss Mary, I would never do.

2. *Kiss, I would never do Mary.

3. What John did was kiss Mary.

4. *What John did Mary was kiss.

5. What did John do? –– Kiss Mary.

6. *What did John do Mary? –– Kiss.

7. John said he would kiss Mary, and he did so.

8. #John said he would kiss, and he did Mary.

• Let’s call this new unit VP, so our sentence looks like this:• NP [VP kissed NP]

• By the way, how do you know which ones are bad?• Because you are an expert in the grammar of your native language.


18

A bigger unit• The structure that we just saw covers a whole sentence,

and it would be convenient to point this out in some way.• So let us just make up a new unit, say ‘S’ for sentence:

• [S NP [VP kissed NP]]

• Many people find it hard to keep up with all the labels and brackets, though, so linguists came up with an alternative, the tree structure:


S

NP VP

kissed NP

19

Compositionality• Compare these next two sentences:

1. Mary kicked the mule.

2. Mary kicked the bucket.

• #2 has two readingsa. Mary applied force to the bucket with her foot.

b. Mary died.

• In the (a) reading, the sentence means what the sum of its words mean; in the (b) reading, it means something special, not predictable from the individual words.• This happens in morphology, too:

a. the past tense of depart: departed

b. the past tense of go: *goed, went

• We call the (a) readings compositional, while the (b) readings are non-compositional or lexical.


NEXT TIMEIngram §3: Neuroanatomy of language

☞ Go over questions at end of chapter.

09/09/13 Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 20

Documents

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