Ottenheimer Chapter 4

Words and Sentences

Overview

• When we try to learn a new language, we usually begin by trying to learn a few

words and some simple sentences.

• We often begin with dictionaries and phrase books

• But, every language has linguistic complexities that are not discussed in these

resources.

• We often take classes on language

• They give us lots of information and for most of us we forget it when you

need it

• In the field, by contrast, the situation is what prompts the learning and it can

be much more effective. Language instructors call this the full immersion

method.

• Your author promotes the combination of anthropological linguistics methods

with full immersion to learn a language.

• Learning linguistic anthropology to learn a new language means learning how to

discover and analyze word (morphology) and syntax.

• Morphology is both the analysis of words, but also of how they are structured.

• Syntax is the analysis of phrases and sentences and how they are structured.

Duality of Patterning

Morphology

• Words vs morphemes

• Words:

• For most of us words seem to be the fundamental units of language.

• But words are NOT the smallest units of meaning in language.

• For instance, the word helper can be broken down into smaller units (of

meaning).

• Help The action of giving assistance

• -er The person who does the action

• Helper Combine to mean a person who gives assistance.

• These meaningful units are called morphemes.

• Morphemes:

• Phonemes make a difference in meaning but usually do not, by themselves,

have any meaning.

• To take on meaning, phonemes must be organized into morphemes (duality of

patterning).

• Morphemes are the smallest linguistic units that have a definite meaning.

• It is easy to get the false impression that a morpheme is simply a word.

• Many words are indeed morphemes; but some words contain several

morphemes.

Morphemes

• Back to the example of helper:

• To understand morphemes, let’s count morphemes

• There is one morpheme in the word help.

• There are two morphemes in the word helper.

• Can you see the 3 morphemes in the word unhelpful.

• Dictionaries generally only give you a few base forms of a word.

• These books assume you know how to analyze complex words and

how to turn simple base forms into more complex ones.

• But learning to think in terms of morphemes and structure is how to

learn to see the patterns in a language and to learn it better.

• Back to the helper example

• When we look over this series of words: farmer (a person who farms),

fisher (a person who farms), eater a person who eats) we see the

pattern,

• The –er unit means ‘a person who ______”

Morphological Analysis 1 • Morphological analysis consists of two parts:

• First, the linguist identifies (and describes) morphemes

• Need to determine the minimal units of meaning

• Do this by comparing words or short phrases that seem to have the same patterns

• Second, the linguist analyzes their arrangements

• Identifying morphemes

• The trick in identifying morphemes in a language is to find the minimal units of meaning.

• Do this by comparison of words or short phrases

• Looking at the example below, note that not all languages are built the same way (one language may use 1 word, while another 2+ words for the same meaning)

• Do you see the pattern?

• Hu- seems to mean ‘to’ so the patter is to say ‘to _______’

• In the English example of p. 84 we learn that –er means ‘person who’ and –s means ‘many’

Morphological Analysis 2 • Describing morphemes

• Morphemes are generally described in terms of whether they function as bases or as affixes.

• Bases form the foundations of words (In English, sing is a base)

• Affixes attach to bases (In English, -er is an affix)

• Secondarily, bases can be further broken down into roots and stems (next slide)

• Affixes fall into three categories

• Prefixes

• Suffixes

• Infixes

• Free and unbound morphemes

• Morphemes that can stand alone are free morphemes

• Bound morphemes must be attached to other morphemes

Morphological Analysis 3 Roots and stems can be a bit confusing at first glance (or they were for me), but

it’s a case of ‘don’t overthink it’ I learned.

A root is a morpheme (or word) that serves as the foundation for other words, so for the example in the last slide, sing is a root type of base

A stem is a word (or collection of morphemes) that is derived from a root and to which additional affixes can be attached.

• In English, singer is a stem (built from the root morpheme sing and the affix of –er

• You can add to the stem to create new word (for instance, singers is formed by the addition of –s)

Morphological Analysis 4 How morphemes are arranged

It is important to understand some of the ways that morphemes can be arranged to build words.

English has the morphemes: help, -ful, & un;

• Is unhelpful the only way construction that is correct?

• How about unfulhelp or helpfulun?

In order not to be attempting everything by trial and error we need to identify the range of possibilities that anthropologists have developed for the arrangements

Order and placement of affixes

Affixes are categorized by where they attach to base morphemes

• Prefixes are bound morphemes that attach to the beginnings of base forms (im+possible; un+likely)

• Suffixes are bound morphemes that attach to the ends of base forms (walk+ing)

• Infixes are bound morphemes that are inserted into the middle of a base form (fan+bloody+tastic)

• Circumfixes are bound morphemes that attach to both the front and the back of a base (m+loz+i (fisherman) or the French ne ___ pas (means not))

• Reduplication creates an affix from a part of an existing base and then attaches that affix to the base form(In Moli: Sahaha derives from saha (smart) so that sahaha means very smart or mpole+mpole (very slow))

• Interweaving is a process in which morphemes are interspersed within base forms

• Ktb in Arabic means having to do with writing. So interweaving –-i-aa -creates k+i+t+aa+b (book) or –aa-i- creates kaatib (writer )and so forth

• Portmanteau is a process in which morphemes blend into each either [Web + log -> blog; smoke+fog -> smog ;or motor+hotel -> motel]

Morphological Analysis 5 How morphemes are arranged (continued)

Hierarchy

All languages have a specific order in which affixes can be attached

Need to know this hierarchy to work successfully in a language

In English

Suffixes are generally added before prefixes.

Create helpful before unhelpful

Derivation and inflection

Derivation is the process of creating new words

Inflection is the process of modifying existing words

Let’s backtrack a second to hierarchy: In English first you derive words then

you inflect them

How do you know if you have a new word or just a modification of an existing

one? You do frame substitutions.

We will use this technique in two ways this chapter

FYI: First for the derivation/inflection question & later for syntax issues

Morphological Analysis 6

• An example of a substitution frame (the ____ in the _____)

the cat in the hat the cats in the hat

the cat in the chair the cats in the chair

the cat in the basket the cats in the basket

• So, hat, chair, and basket can all be used in the same spot

• So all 3 belong to the same category of the word

• Other words that fit into the same slot should belong to the cast category of word.

• As I can say the cat in the bed, then bed is also in the category of the word (or garden, or

car and so forth)

• Cats can also substitute for cat. So, cat and cats are both words in the same category.

• But if we substituted catty for cat as in ‘the catty in the chair’, then we learn this is not

correct so that catty is in a different category of word than cat.

• The important concept is that of categories and roots.

• If cat and cats are from the same root and are in the same category we say cats is inflected

from cat. (as cat has been modified to create cats)

• While cat and catty share the same root, they are in different categories. The word catty is

derived from cat. Meaning cat has been used to create (derive) the new word catty

Allomorphs 1

• An allomorph is a variant of a morpheme

• For instance, in Shinzwani there are 2 different prefixes for when making

singular/plural distinctions.

• English examples:

• In English the plural for each of these words differ when creating the {-plural

form}:

• Cats is /-s/ following voiceless stops

• Dogs is /-z/ following voiced stops and vowels

• Horses is /-Iz/ following fricatives.

• In English the {negative- form}

• Improbable is /im-/ used with words that begin with [p]

• Illegal is /il-/ used with words that begin with [l]

• Intolerant is /in-/ used with words that begin with [d], [t], or [s]

• One more reminder that the boundaries between working with morphemes and working

with phrases (usually a syntax arena) can differ between languages and gives the example

in Shinzwani of:

• Hutsohoa means ‘to collect clams on the beach at low tide” [Note the phrase]

• Nitsoloa means ‘I will go fishing’ [This is entire sentence!]

Allomorphs 2

• Why do allomorphs change?

• Adjusting to neighboring sounds is one factor

• Called morphophonemic conditioning

• English: cats, dogs, horses; oxen, improbable, illogical

• Reflecting semantic categories is another factor

• Called semantic conditioning

• The example of the sun and moon letters in Arabic which

create different variants of the on p. 95

Syntax 1

• Knowing how words are formed in a language does not necessarily tell you how to arrange

words into sentences.

• Syntax is the area of linguistics anthropology that examines and describes the ways that words

are arranged into phrases and sentences.

• Syntactic analysis

• We return to substitution frames

• These are grammatical frames into which you can place related words.

• Also called ‘slots and fillers’

• Example:

• The cat in the hat

• The cat in the basket

• The cat in the tree

• Each frame helps use to understand the syntax of the language being studied

• Ask how easily words and phrases can be substituted into specific contexts (called frames)

• The large red balloon is fine.

• The red large balloon is not fine

• Is either of these a sentence?

• "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

• "Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.“

• Most English speakers will agree that the first one is more acceptable, though it is bizarre.

Syntax 2

• Using substitution frames to learn syntax

• If you are very interested in the details for this read p.95-96

• We are going to go over the highlights and not dig in deep

• Labeling Substitution Frames

• Not all languages have the same categories for substitution frames so let the language

be your guide

• Examples of different categories

• Grammatical gender is not about gender (sorry for the confusing term). Grammatical

genders are categories into which words (usually nouns) are classified in a language

• Shinzwani have 8 of them, including: human beings, animals, body parts, useful

things, abstract, and so forth

• Czech: masculine, feminine, neuter

• Case is a way of marking how a noun functions in a sentence (for instance as subject

or object of a sentence)

• There are 7 cases in Czech, but here are 3: Nominative, accusative, and

Genitive

• If object use nominative, if subject then use accusative, if some quality or

quantity of the word use genitive.

• Obligatory categories are grammatical categories that must be expressed when

speaking (Singular/plural in English & case in Czech)

Syntax 3

• How syntactic units are arranged.

• Not enough to identify and describe substitution frames, need to know which

ones you can use in which parts of a sentence.

• All languages seem to have substitution frames for Subjects (S), Verbs (V) and

Objects (O)

• But not all languages arrange those three possible frames in the same order

• SVO is used by 75% of languages (English is one example)

• SOV languages include Inuit, Japanese, and Farsi

• VSO languages include classical Arabic and Irish

• VOS languages include Cakchiquel (Guatemala) and Fijian

• Klingon (Star Trek) is an OVS language.

• OSV languages include Apuriná and Xanante (Brazil)

• Some languages use more than one pattern: German uses both SOV and SVO

sentence patterns

• Other syntactic aspects are linked to this pattern, and are discussed on p. 101 if you are

interested.

Ambiguities and Other Difficulties

• Some phrases are just hard to decipher and they indicate alternative substitution frames

• Here are some examples

• Cow kills farmer with ax (newspaper headline)

• Put more H2O in the coffee, then the bones (message on chalkboard in physical

anthro lab)

• Fruit flies like a banana (attributed to Groucho Marx).

• Depending on the substitution frame you use the meaning changes

Kinds of Grammars

• Prescriptive grammars

• Provides a model of ‘proper’ speech

• To go boldly … or To boldly go (split infinitive)

• Many schoolteachers, even today

• Descriptive grammars

• Describes a language structure on its own terms

• Boas and anthropologists, 1900s

• Many linguists today continue this tradition

• FYI: Discussion between the two grammars here: Do you speak

American?

• Generative

• Generates all possible sentences of a language

• Noam Chomsky, 1950s

• This is the one we will spend some time discussing.

Generative Grammar 1

• This kind of grammar moved away from substitution frames and

looks for underlying rules and abstract forms.

• Descriptive grammar sees the sentence as the end point and

explain how sentences are built up out of morphemes, and

words, and substitution frames.

• Generative grammar took the sentence as the starting point

and worked to develop rules for getting from the abstract idea

of a sentence to the kinds of words that speakers might use in a

real sentence.

• To understand this process we need some vocabulary words:

• Deep structure refers to the underlying grammar that allows

people to produce sentences (abstract)

• Surface structure refers to the actual sentences that are

produced in a sentence (concrete)

Generative Grammar 2

• Vocabulary (continued)

• Phrase structure rules are those rules that generate the deep

structure of a sentence.

• Sentence thought to be simple and declarative

• Example: The dog chases the cat.

• Transformation rules change the deep structure sentence into

other sentences.

• These are optional rules

• Example: The dog chases the cat. Does the dog chase the

cat? Or The dog does not chase the cat.

• Phonological rules assign specific sounds and produces the

surface-level sentence.

Generating Sentences

• So in the example seen in the tree diagram, the sentence is re-

written (generated) by use of several phrase structure rules into

the result we see.

• Rule 1: S NP + VP

• Rule 2: NP N

• Rule 3: VP V +AdvP

• Rule 4: AdvP Adv + Det + N

• What about ambiguous sentences? Well, generative grammar can

reveal the two alternative underlying structures.

Comments on Generative Grammar

• Advantage of generative grammar is that trees show structure more

clearly.

• Disadvantages include

• Relies on introspection

• You need to know the language well enough

• To judge grammaticality of sentences

• Assumes universal underlying structure

• Accessible through any language

• But new data continues to challenge universals

• Not as useful in learning new languages

• Working with surface level sentences

• Requires working with actual speakers

• And discovery of substitution frames