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Practicing Problems andThinking About Linguistics
Billy Clark, Middlesex University, [email protected]
UK Linguistics Olympiad Summer CourseCorpus Christi CollegeSeptember 2015
Before We Start
Without thinking too much about it, please answer (individually, rather than in groups) the questions on the handout . . .
Aims For These Sessions
Part 1: Practising problem-solving
Part 2: Thinking about linguistics
Practising Problem-Solving
o We’ll look at two problems (which some of you might have looked at before) from round 2 of last year’s UK Linguistics Olympiad
o We’ll discuss ways of tackling them
o We’ll exchange ideas about problem-solving techniques in general
o We’ll put into practice some of the ideas which we’ve developed during the week
Practising Problem-Solving
Before trying the two puzzles I’ll show you now, think about any strategies or any other thoughts you have from this week which you think can help you with olympiad puzzles
Practising Problem-Solving
I’ll now give you two puzzles to work on.
Rather than racing to get to the answers think about what kinds of strategies you think can help you with each one and write them down as you work through them.
After you’ve worked on them, I’ll share the explanations which are available on the UKLO website
Thinking About Linguistics
Now I’ll present some thoughts about what linguistics is and how some aspects of it relate to the olympiad puzzles
Questions
One way of thinking about linguistics is to say that it’s about questions
Linguists notice questions and set about trying to answer them systematically
Here are some which were not (directly) raised on the handout:
Why do English people say:
I often go to the cinema
Questions
While French people say:
I go often to the cinema
(‘je vais souvent au cinema’)
Questions
English people say: French people say:
You’re a student, aren’t you?
You’re a student, isn’t it?
(‘vous êtes un étudiant, n’est-ce pas?’)
Questions
Some English people say:
Other English people say:
You’re a student, aren’t you? You’re a student,
innit?
Questions
Questions
Noticing examples like this can lead to other questions. We might, for example, look at:
o How languages develop
o How attitudes to particular forms arise
o Other differences between languages
o Others? . . .
Which of these sound natural to you?
Take the lift, innit?
Will you be quiet, innit?
More Questions
Teach me, innit?
More Questions
o Why do some forms sound worse to speakers than others?
o Why are some forms harder for second language learners to acquire than others?
o What is the relationship between what speakers judge acceptable in a language and what is grammatical in that language?
More Questions
o What does grammatical mean?
o What is a language?
o How is language acquired?
o How is language used?
o What factors interact in acquisition, usage, etc.?
o How does/did language evolve?
o How is language similar or different to other kinds of communication?
Olympiad Puzzles and Linguistics Puzzles
As we’ve mentioned before, a key difference between olympiad puzzles and linguistics puzzles is that the olympiad puzzles are designed with solutions in mind while linguists are puzzling with questions which might never have solutions or only have partial ones.
A Linguistics Puzzle
How do we form the past tense in English?
Discuss in groups and see if you can come up with a rule
Past Tense Forms in English
Here are some forms which should help you to work out how the past tense is formed in English:
Present Past
pass passed
claim claimed
land landed
dent dented
Past Tense Forms in English
What about these forms?
Present Past
run ran
fly flew
sing sang
rise rose
know knew
More Data
What do these utterances by children suggest?
My teddy bear cloomb onto my bed
John runned away
What is the plural form of mouse?
Answering the Questions
Linguists aim to develop better answers to questions by approaching them systematically. This involves:
o Hypotheses
o Data
o Methods
Hypotheses
Hypotheses are statements which could be true or false. Linguists aim to explore hypotheses which:
o are falsifiable in principle (they could be false)
o are testable in practice (we can think of ways to test them)
o would be surprising if confirmed
o suggest further research
We test hypotheses by trying as hard as we can to show that they are false
Data and Methods
Linguists use a wide range of methods and data to aim to develop answers. These include:
o using corpora (collections of utterances, nowadays usually tagged and stored digitally)
o intuitions of informants
o text analyses
o experiments
o observation of language users
o interviews
Methodological Issues
Each of these has particular problems, e.g.
o corpora might not contain relevant examples
o intuitions are not reliable
o experimental situations are unnatural in various ways
o observation affects behaviour
So linguists have to be very careful in designing their research and critical in assessing results
Branches of Linguistics
Linguistics is often divided into areas we have discussed this week:
phonetics phonology morphology
syntax semantics pragmatics
Questions: where do words appear here? How do they relate to these areas?
Branches of Linguistics
Work in linguistics is often divided into areas other than the ones mentioned on the previous slide, e.g. linguists describe themselves as specialising in areas such as:
psycholinguistics sociolinguistics
historical linguistics corpus linguistics
computational linguistics
(and others)
Linguistics as a Whole
What unites all of this work is the aim of systematically looking for answers to questions about language
Linguists do this by finding data, formulating and testing hypotheses.
Linguists are always on the lookout for examples. In studying linguistics, you will be encouraged to find your own data by keeping your eyes and ears open for relevant data (some examples I’ve noticed are on this presentation)
Linguistics as a Whole
What unites all of this work is the aim of systematically looking for answers to questions about language
Finally, I’ll tell you now about some more questions linguists have studied, relating them to some of the questions on the handout I gave out earlier . . .
