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Linguistics

Meeting 2

Chapter 7 (Morphology)

and chapter 9 (Syntax)

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Linguistics Today’s agenda

• Repetition of meeting 1• Mini-lecture on morphology• Seminar on chapter 7, worksheet• Mini-lecture on syntax• Seminar on chapter 9, worksheet• Preparation for meeting 3 - About

semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis (ch.10-12)

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Linguistics

Repetition is the mother of all learning

• ”Bildning är det som finns kvar när vi glömt vad vi lärt oss”

Ellen Key (1849-1926)• Do you remember?

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Linguistics

Morphology - the study of word structure

• What is a morpheme?

a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function; the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning; a basic meaningful unit

• Compare with a phoneme:

the smallest linguistically distinctive unit of sound

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Linguistics

Words:Simple or complex

Simple: Cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units: and, pig, chair, jump, berry, hospital.

Complex: Can be analyzed into constituent parts/can be broken down into smaller meaningful units: houses (house + s), gentleman (gentle + man).

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Linguistics Types of morphemes

morphemes

lexical

free

bound

functional

derivational

inflectional

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Linguistics Free vs. bound

• Free - can stand alone: and, pig, chair, jump, berry, hospital, town, dog, yellow, slim.

• Bound - cannot stand alone: unbreakable. Tend to be prefixes and suffixes; productive morpheme.

• ”Cranberry” – unproductive morpheme, exists only in bound form; cranberry, huckleberry.

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Linguistics Lexical vs. functional

• Lexical – Carries the content of messages, open word classes (Ns, Adjs, Vs): zebra, yellow, hunt, twitter.

• Functional – Function words, closed word classes (Conjs, Preps, articles, Pronouns): and, the, a, an, but, there, it, she, under, because.

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Linguistics Derivational vs. …

• Derivational - can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: rearrange, happiness, hospitalize.

• Prefixes and suffixes…• They carry semantic information.• What is the semantic information of

re-, -ness, and –ize?

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Linguistics …inflectional

• Inflectional – indicates aspects of the grammatical function of a word, without deriving a new word or a word in a new grammatical category: dogs, dog’s, faster, fastest, sings, walked, singing, taken.

• There are 8 inflectional morphemes in English.

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Linguistics Allomorphs

• Allomorphs are variants of a particular morpheme, e.g. ‘plural’

• Give examples:

1. -s

2. -es

3. Ø (zero morph)

4. vowel change

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Linguistics Worksheets 1-2

…and any other questions you might have

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Linguistics Study Q 1

• What are the functional morphemes in the following sentence?

• When he arrived, the old man had an umbrella and a large plastic bag full of books.

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Linguistics Study Q 2

• What are the lexical morphemes in the sentence?

• Haitians are used at the best of times to queuing for things; waiting is, after all, the first cousin of poverty. But in the nine days since the earthquake struck, they have become experts. (from The Guardian, Jan. 21, 2010)

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Linguistics Study Q 3

• List the bound morphemes in these words: fearlessly, misleads, previewer, shortened, unhappier.

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Linguistics Study Q 4

• What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions?

• It's raining• the cow jumped over the moon• the newest style• the singer's new songs

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Linguistics Study Q 5

• What are the allomorphs of 'plural' in this set of English words?

• ballons• syllabi• phenomena• women• churches• children

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Linguistics Study Q 6

• What are the allomorphs of 'past tense’ in this set of English verbs?

• jumped• tied• ran• became• put Ø (no change)

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Linguistics Syntax

• The analysis of sentence structure• The system of rules and categories

that underlies sentence formation in human language.

• House painted student a the.• A student painted the house.• Colorless green ideas sleep

furiously.

*

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Linguistics Noam Chomsky

• Language acquisition device, LAD

• ”I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences”

• Generative grammar: Explicit rules that can generate an infinite number of sentences; syntactic structures

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Linguistics

Deep and surface structure

Shaquille made a slam dunk.The slam dunk was made by Shaquille.

NP + VP + NP(abstract level)

Was a slam dunk made by Shaquille?It was Shaquille who made a slam dunk.

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Linguistics

Syntactic component of the grammar

Phrase structure rules

Deep structure

Transformations

Surface structure

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Linguistics Structural ambiguity

• From Yule (2006): Annie whacked a man with an umbrella.

• Women catch colds easier than men.

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Linguistics Tree diagrams

S

NP VP

NV NP

Annie whacked a man with an umbrella.

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Linguistics Annie has the

S

NP VP

NV NP

Annie whacked a man with an umbrella.

Art

N

PP

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Linguistics The man has the

S

NP VP

NV NP

Annie whacked a man with an umbrella.

Art

N

PP

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Linguistics Phrase structure rules

• Generative grammar: Explicit rules that can generate an infinite number of sentences; syntactic structures

• ”a noun phrase rewrites as/consists of/branches into an article followed by a noun”

• NP Art NNP

NArt

the ball

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Linguistics Lexical rules

• Specify which words can be used when constituents are rewritten.

• Example: Art a, the

• ”an article rewrites as a or the”

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Linguistics Recursion

From Yule (2006:93):

1. Mary helped George.

2. Cathy knew that Mary helped George.

3. John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George.

Recursion!

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Linguistics Transformational rules

• Movement of constituents within a sentence.

• There are very, very, very advanced transformational rules…

• Syntax is fun

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Linguistics Worksheet 2

• Go through answers!

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Linguistics

For meeting 3 Yule (2006)

• Semantics (ch.10)– The study of meaning

• Pragmatics (ch.11)– How the transmission of meaning

depends not only on the linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, etc.

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Linguistics For meeting 3…

• Discourse analysis (ch. 12)– The branch of linguistics that deals

with the study and application of approaches to analyze written, spoken or signed language

Bla, bla

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Linguistics Do you speak English?

Big TrainBBC Comedy

Ali G interviews Noam Chomskyabout ”language”

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Linguistics YouTube clips

• Chimp talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lrv1CrGq3o

• Do you speak English? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0I7PCoy-nk&feature=related

• ”Ali G” interviews Noam Chomsky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro&feature=related

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Linguistics The end

Good luck

studying