linguistics homework

Chapter 1: Language and Linguistics

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

How Many Languages Are There?

Enumerating them is not a straightforward task ◦ Dialects vs. different languages

◦ New languages are “discovered”

◦ Languages may have different names or different spellings

◦ Languages die

◦ Languages are born

The Ethnologue lists 7,105 languages

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Does the United States Have an Official Language?

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Does the United States Have an Official Language?

English is not the official language of the United States

Nearly 55 million U.S. residents speak a home language other than English

176 living languages are spoken in the United States today

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

What Is Human Language?

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

What Is Human Language? Expression: words, phrases, and sentences, including intonation and stress

Meaning: the senses and referents of expressions

Context: the social situation in which expressions are uttered

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

What is language? A communication system of Signs

A sign has two aspects:

 A form and meaning

 Two types– representational or arbitrary

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Two Types of Signs

Representational signs: the sign may suggest its meaning Examples:

◦ Footprint = ‘a foot was here’

◦ Smoke = ‘there’s a fire’

◦ Fever = ‘your body has an infection’

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Representational Signs

Two types of Signs Arbitrary signs: no inherent connection between the sign and what it indicates

◦ Language is a system of arbitrary signs

◦ The associations between signs and meanings are established by convention

house ghar chẽ makan casa

English Nepali Newar Hindi Spanish

dog kukur khica kutta perro

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Linguistic Signs

Phonology: The sounds of the forms of language. ◦ Phones: [b], [o], [t] of boat

◦ Each phone has its own phonological features

Phonological rules--*tboa *btoa

Morphology: Morphemes and words ◦ boy

◦ boyish: boy + ish

morphological rules: the rules governing the possible combinations of morphemes into complex words--*ish+boy

Linguistic Signs Syntax: words and parts-of-speech

A boy is standing by the door.

*A boy is standing the door by

Syntactic rules: the rules governing the possible combinations of words into phrases and sentences

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Language as a Sign System Language as a sign system has two parts:

a lexicon : the inventory of its signs

a grammar: ◦ the rules for the construction of its signs

◦ The rules for combining these signs into messages.

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Symbolic nature of Language If Language were not symbolic, we would all be speaking the same language.

Because of the symbolic nature of language, we speak different languages.

It also allows for our language to change. ◦ We say a pit, a seed, or a core of a peach.

◦ A pit can also be a hole in the ground

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Linguistic Knowledge Most speakers are not aware of the linguistic knowledge they possess

1) John will kicked the ball yesterday.

◦ Good? Bad? How do you know?

2) The man cleaned up it.

Good? Bad? How do you know?

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Linguistic Knowledge How did you know that 1 and 2 were bad?

How did you know how to correct them?

Did anyone teach you these sentence?

Some people believe that children are “blank slates” and learn by imitating alone. ◦ Have you ever heard 1 and 2 so you could fix it by

imitation?

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Linguistic Knowledge The answer is NO

There must be something you know about English independently of knowing what words it contains

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Making it conscious

Listen to how you actually say the sounds and syllables Veg-e-tar-i-an

Listen to the strong and weak stress for each syllable Veg-e-tar-i-an

Identify the strongest of the strong Veg-e-tar-i-an

Break the word apart in front of the strongest syllable

Insert the emphasis word

Veg-e-FRIGGIN-tar-i-an

Evidence for a biological basis for language

This hidden knowledge of language that we possess shows the biological basis for language

That is, we are hardwired to acquire language.

We know so much about our language that we don’t know we know it.

Grammatical Competence We know so much about our language that we don’t know we know it.

This set of unconscious knowledge that we have of our native language is called Grammatical Competence.

Definition in your text: The mental capacity that enables speakers to form

grammatical sentences such as My mother is taking a long shower rather than “a taking long my shower mother” is grammatical competence. (page 9)

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Grammatical Competence Rules are the observable patterns that languages follow

Grammatical competence allows people to use rules to create and comprehend an infinite number of utterances they have never heard before

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Features of human language Five features that characterize human languages: Arbitrariness

Discreteness

Duality

Displacement

Recursion and productivity

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Arbitrariness

Arbitrariness: There is no natural or inherent relationship between the form of a sign and its meaning

English: hand Nepali: haat Newar: lha Spanish: manos

Discreteness

Complex messages in human language can be broken into smaller, discrete units ◦ Phonemes. Syllables, morphemes, words, phrases,

clauses

◦ Key-- /ki/ (consonant /k/; vowel /i/

◦ Kay-- /ke/ (consonant /k/; vowel /i/

◦ view vs. few—consonants /v/ vs. /f/

◦ Cream– one syllable; creamer—2 syllables

◦ teachers—teach+er+s—3 morphemes

◦ A boy is walking by the bank—7 words

Duality Language is comprised of meaningless parts that combine to make meaningful parts

Two levels of language system ◦ Discrete forms

◦ p, i, k ◦ p, a, r, t ◦ Affixes-- -s, -ish, -er

◦ Meaningful combinations of these sounds ◦ pick, kick ◦ part, trap, rapt ◦ boys, boyish, player ◦ spot, tops, opts, pots ◦ spot the tops of the pots

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Displacement

Speakers can talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment.

Mythical creatures, demons, fairies, and angels

Productivity/Recursion

The ability to create new words ◦ add new words—e-mail, spam, vape (e-cigarettes),

twerk, selfie, felfie (funeral selfie), jorts (jean shorts), hashtag, tweet, manscape, turketarians, locovore

the ability to create and understand an infinite number of sentences A man being boiled in a hot pot of stew cannot possibly vote for the next presidential election.

Productivity/Recursion We are able to ‘embed’ a sign inside a sign of the same type: ◦ She’s a very kind friend.

◦ She’s a very, very kind friend

◦ She’s a very, very, very kind friend..

◦ I know Mary ◦ I know Mary who lives in Salem. ◦ They know that I know Mary who lives in Salem…..

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

There is no longest sentence This is the house. This is the house that Jack built.

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Communicative Competence

Communicative competence: the ability to use language appropriately in context

Grammatical competence: a person’s knowledge of vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence structure, and meaning

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Languages and Dialects

Everyone speaks a dialect, and speaking a dialect means speaking a language

Different dialects vs. different languages

◦ Romance languages

◦ Chinese

◦ Hindi and Urdu

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Modes of Linguistic Communication

Speaking: Primary mode of human language

Writing: Represents the spoken words, not the entities and activities themselves

Signing: Sign languages such as ASL combine hand shape, hand location, and hand movement in a system of grammatical rules

◦ The grammar of ASL is not related to English grammar

◦ ASL has regional and ethnic dialects

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Structure of Sign languages Sign languages are autonomous natural languages

Expressive as any other spoken languages

Arbitrary and conventional

Rule-governed

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Sign languages are rule governed:

Five aspects:

the location of the sign in space ◦ On the body, on the head, in the space in front of the body

the hand shape used to make the sign ◦ which fingers are closed or open, open or closed thumb, etc.

the type of movement made by the hands ◦ Up and down, side to side, in an arc

the orientation of the palms of the hands. ◦ Facing the signer or facing a way from the signer

(Lucas and Valli, page 231)

Non-Manual markers—facial expression and head movements

A change in one of the five components can result in a change of meaning

Location of the sign in space apple candy onion

(signs taken from http://www.lessontutor.com/ees.asl)

Let’s look at the signs given for

SUMMER, UGLY and DRY on page 232

Mother and father

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JKeQVl6DgMhttp://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=2JKeQVl6DgM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuU_NfjPVAhttp://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuU_NfjPVA

Handshapes

Handshapes carrots beans peas

(signs taken from http://www.lessontutor.com/ees.asl)

Handshapes WHITE vs. LIKE

RED vs. PINK

YEAR vs. WORLD

CAR vs. WHICH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqF8lSxalYo (like)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Aq3IzYnUU (white)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9KsH2d64EA (red)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZXnFKV-SwA (pink)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/y/year.htm (year)

Movement MOTHER vs. GRANDMOTHER

WONDERFUL vs. SUNDAY

OPEN vs. CLOSE

NAME vs. SHORT

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/m/mom.htm (mother)

http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/g/grandma.htm (grandmother)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/w/wonderful.htm (wonderful)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/s/sunday.htm (Sunday)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/o/open.htm (open)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/c/close.htm (close)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/n/name.htm (name)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/s/short.htm (short)

Palm orientation NAME vs. SIT

NAME vs. CHAIR

CHILDREN vs. THINGS

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/n/name.htm (name)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/s/sit.htm (sit)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/c/chair.htm (chair)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/c/child.htm (children)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/t/thing.htm (things)

Verbs and nouns

Expressiveness in sign languages

Non-manual features in Sign languages

Sign languages involve:

Manual signs made by the hands

Non-manual features—facial expressions, lip movements, posture, orientation and movement of head or body

Yes/No questions :

Would you like some tea?

—raised eyebrows, wide open eyes with the head and shoulders leaning slightly forward

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/yesnofacial%20expression.htm

WH-questions:

What would you like?

—squinted eyebrows with only the head moving slightly forward (Baker-Shenk and Cokely 1991)

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages- layout/whfacialexpression.htm

Diversity in Sign languages Mutually unintelligible

Australian Sign Language

Chinese Sign Language

Swedish Sign Language

Russian Sign Language

Do Only Humans Have Language? Animals have systems of communication to signal danger, etc.

But these systems lack creativity and are based on nonarbitrary signs

◦ Example: honeybees have elaborate dances to convey information to the hive about a food source

◦ The dance tells other bees the distance and direction of a food source

◦ But, bees can only use their communication system for a very limited range of meanings

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

The bee dance

Bees have a communication system that relies on dance to convey information about the location and quality of food sources to the rest of the hive Round dance: food source is within 20 feet from the hive Sickle dance: food source is 20 to 60 feet from the hive Tail-wagging dance: food source is more than 60 feet from the

hive

The number of repetitions of the basic pattern in the tail wagging dance indicates the precise distance, with a slower repetition rate indicating a longer distance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI- g4jHg&feature=related

Bees’ dances

Can Chimpanzees Learn a Human Language?

Vicki

◦ After seven years, she could utter four spoken words with difficulty

Washoe

◦ Raised as a human child and taught ASL

◦ She could make 132 signs and understood many more

◦ She was able to identify classes of objects and combined signs to make complex utterances

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Can Chimpanzees Learn a Human Language? Loulis ◦ An infant chimp acquired 47 signs from other chimps

rather than humans

Sarah and Lana ◦ Sarah used plastic chips to communicate

◦ Lana used a computer to communicate with symbols similar to the plastic chips Sarah used

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Can Chimpanzees Learn a Human Language?

Project Nim

◦ The study: a 5-year experiment to teach a chimp sign language in a controlled environment

◦ Conclusion: chimps cannot learn language as humans do

◦ Critics: how similar are the learning environments for chimps and children?

The general consensus among psychologists and linguists is that animal communication is fundamentally different from human language

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

The Origin of Human Languages

It is challenging to determine when language arose because there are three very different timelines involved:

◦ The development of language in a human being

◦ About a decade

◦ The development of a particular language

◦ Centuries or millennia

◦ The development of the brain and vocal apparatus to enable human language

◦ Hundreds of thousands of years

Estimates vary widely ◦ From 40,000-50,000 or 400,000-500,000 years old

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

What Is Linguistics?

Linguistics: Systematic inquiry into human language

The scope of linguistics includes:

◦ Language structure (and its underlying grammatical competence) and language use (and its underlying communicative competence)

◦ Language as social action

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

What Is Linguistics?

The many branches of linguistics focus on:

◦ Grammar: the structural patterns of speech sounds, words, sentence formation, and meaning

◦ Pragmatics: the relationship between expression & meaning and context & interpretation

◦ Language variation

◦ Applications of linguistics: education, clinical research, forensic analysis, language policy

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE

Computers and Linguistics Corpus linguistics is the term used for compiling collections of texts and using them to probe language use

A corpus is a representative body of texts

Corpora are very useful for dictionaries, speech recognition, and artificial intelligence

LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE