Linguistic Principles

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Linguistic Principles
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BASIC GRAMMATICAL CONCEPTS

• Word Order
• English (S-V-O)
• The ghost chased the vampire.
• Subject (S) Verb (V) Object (O)
• Other languages (Russian, Polish) more flexible
  meaning conveyed by the affixes, not word order
• Duch scigal wampira.
• Duch wampira scigal.
• Wampira duch scigal.
• Wampira scigal duch.
• Scigal wapmira duch.
• Scigal duch wampira.

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Phonology

• study of the sound system of language
• sounds that language uses, and the rules on how
  sounds are combined
• there are about 200 sounds used in languages
  throughout the world
• no language makes use of all 200 sounds
• English has over 40 different sounds

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Phonetics vs. Phonology

• Phonology- the higher level study of sounds
  (sounds in the context of a particular language)
• Phonetics- a lower level study of raw sounds
• pin vs. spin ph in pin is aspirated p in
  spin unaspirated

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Phonetics vs. Phonology

• English aspiration of /p/ makes no difference to
  the meaning of the word
• in Thai- aspiration does make a difference-
• paa unaspirated /p/ - forest
• paa aspirated /ph/ - to split

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Phonetics vs. Phonology

• phones- speech sounds that differ physically
  (e.g., aspirated vs. unspirated p)

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Phoneme

• Phoneme
• the smallest meaningful unit in the sound system
  of the language

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Phoneme

• Changing phonemes changes meanings of words
• in Thai- the two types of /p/ are different
  phonemes
• in English, the two types of p are the same
  phoneme, they are two (allo)phones

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Phoneme

• phoneme
• a combination of distinctive features
• lot vs. rot /l/ and /r/ (minimal pair)
• tar vs. bar /t/ and /b/

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Allophones

• l and r are different phones in English,
  they are different phonemes
• in Japanese, they represent the same phoneme-
  they are contextual variants of the phoneme-
  different allophones

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Allophones

• different phones that are understood as the same
  phoneme in a language are called allophones
• in English, aspirated ph and unaspirated p
  are allophones of /p/

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Phonetics vs. Phonology

• Phonetics- the study of phones
• Phonology- the study of phonemes

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Articulatory Phonetics

• phonetics- the study of speech sounds
• articulatory phonetics- how sounds are made
• auditory/perceptual phonetics- how sounds are
  perceived
• acoustic phonetics- the sound waveform and
  physical properties
• all of the sounds of a language can be described
  in terms of the movements of the physical
  structures of the vocal tract

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Classifying Speech Sounds

• Vowels
• Sounds made with an unobstructed vocal
• tract
• /æ/ as in cat, /I/ in bid
• Consonants
• Sounds made with a constricted vocal tract
• /p/ and /t/ in put

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Sound Symbols The International Phonetic Alphabet

• English has 26 letters for over 40 sounds
• no one-to-one correspondence between letter and
  sound a about, fat, fate, farm, fall,
• IPA is a means of representing the 200 sounds
  found in languages

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http//www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics
/russell/138/sec1/anatomy.htm
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Classifying Speech Sounds

• place of articulation (articulators used)
• Lips /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/ (bilabial)
• Tongue on alveolar ridge (alveolar)
• /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /l/, /n/

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Classifying Speech Sounds

• manner of articulation (how sound is produced)
• Stop Consonants (constricted vocal tract)
• /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/
• Fricatives airstream friction in the mouth
• /f/, /v/, /?/, /s/, /z/, /?/, /h/
• Nasals air released through the nose
  /m/, /n/,
• /?/

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Classifying Speech Sounds

• Voicing
• Voiced vibrating vocal folds
• /v/, /z/, /d/, /g/, /b/
• Voiceless /f/, /s/, /t/, /k/, /p/

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Phonotactics

• Phonotactics Permissible sound combinations
• PORT PLORT PBORT?
• Rule No two stop consonants at initial position
• Learning rules of phonotactic arrangement -an
  important component in phonological
• development.

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Morphemes Word Structure

• Morpheme the smallest unit of meaning in
  language
• One Morpheme- a word that cannot be divided into
  smaller parts with meaning run, big
• Free Morphemes Stand alone
• free, boy
• Bound Morphemes Attached to Free Morphemes
• -er as in runner, -est as in biggest

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Morphemes and Language

• words may have more than one morpheme
• REPLACE

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Morphemes and Language

• words may have more than one morpheme
• RE - PLACE
• bound morpheme free standing morpheme (
  prefix) (root)

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Morphemes and Language

• words may have more than one morpheme
• PLACEMENT

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Morphemes and Language

• words may have more than one morpheme
• PLACE- MENT
• free standing morpheme bound morpheme
  (root)
  (suffix)

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Morphemes and Language
AFFIXES
PREFIXES
SUFFIXES
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Count the morphemes

• hundred singer
• finger workforce
• freeze-dry mismatch
• complexity bin
• troublemaker irregularity
• feature pathfinder
• impossible imposing
• cowboy sunrisre

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Syntax

• Syntax rules for combining words into sentences
• Systematic way to put words together
• Subject Verb Object (basic rule)
• The vampire loves Boris.
• Vlad is nasty.

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Components of Syntax

• Phrase Structure Rules
• Syntactic rules that specify the
• permissible sequences of
• constituents
• in a language
• Sentence composed of syntactic categories
• A noun phrase THE VAMPIRE
• A verb phrase EATS GARLIC
• A prepositional phrase IN THE KITCHEN

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Syntax

• The hungry werewolf scared the young witch.
• ---------NP -------------- ----------VP---------
  ----------
• The witch sold her broomstick.
• --NP ----------VP--------------------
• Each phrase-structure rule rewrites a
  constituent into one or more other constituents
• By using a series of rules, we can derive a
  sentence from top to bottom (from the largest to
  the smallest constituent)

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(No Transcript)
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www.staff.uni-marburg.de/uffmann/syntax-trees.pdf

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www.staff.uni-marburg.de/uffmann/syntax-trees.pdf

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www.staff.uni-marburg.de/uffmann/syntax-trees.pdf

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www.staff.uni-marburg.de/uffmann/syntax-trees.pd
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Phrase-Structure Rules
They are eating apples.

• phrase-structure rules provide a good account of
  one type of sentence ambiguity called
  phrase-structure ambiguity
• in these sentences, the assignment of words to
  constituents is ambiguous and more than one tree
  structure could be made for each case

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Phrase-Structure Rules
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Linguistic Productivity

• ability to create and comprehend novel utterances
• iteration (repeating the same rule e.g., to
  conjoin sentences)
• The vampire loves the ghost and the ghost loves
  the werewolf and the werewolf loves the ghoul
  and....

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Linguistic Productivity

• recursion (producing embedded sentences)
• Vlad thinks the werewolf left...
• Boris knows Vlad thinks the werewolf left.
• The vampire loved the ghoul.
• The vampire the werewolf hated loved the ghoul.
• The vampire the werewolf the ghost scared hated
  loved the ghoul.

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Linguistic Productivity- - Recursion
VP V S
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Linguistic Productivity

• The vampire knows the witch thinks the ghoul is
  gone.
• S NP V S (a recursive rule)
• recursion- a resilient property of
  human language use

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Problems with Phrase Structure Grammars

• -too many rules to learn
• -it cannot explain the relationship between
  related sentences
• The witch parked her broomstick.
• (Active Voice)
• The broomstick was parked by the witch.
• (Passive Voice)

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Problems with Phrase Structure Grammars

• Some types of sentence ambiguity cannot be
  explained by constituent analysis
• A single surface structure derived from two
  distinct deep structures
• Flying broomsticks can be dangerous.
• (The act of flying broomsticks can be dangerous/
  Broomsticks that are flying can be dangerous)

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Problems with Phrase Structure Grammars

• some pairs of sentences are similar in their
  phrase
• structure but not in their underlying structure
• 1. Vlad is easy to please.
• 2. Vlad is eager to please.
• In (1), Vlad is the object of please
• in (2) Vlad is the subject of please
• (cf. It is easy to please Vlad vs.
• It is eager to please Vlad.)

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Problems with Phrase Structure Grammars

• Grammar that includes only one level of structure
  is not descriptively adequate

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Transformational Grammar (Chomsky, 1957, 1965)

• Grammar (theory of language)
• description of a person's linguistic knowledge
• formal device with a finite set of rules that
  generates the sentences in the language
• Language
• An infinite set of well-formed sentences

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Chomsky's View of Grammar

• The goal of linguistics is to describe the
  grammar that enables us to produce and understand
  language
• competence (our abstract knowledge of our
  language) vs. performance (the sentences which we
  actually produce)
• Linguistics must reveal the Universal Grammar
  (UG)
• The tacit grammatical knowledge underlying all
  languages

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Chomsky's View of Grammar

• A theory of grammar should have
• Observational adequacy specify what is what is
  not an acceptable sequence in the language.
• Descriptive adequacy Specify which utterances
  are grammatical how they relate to each other
• Explanatory adequacy must be learnable by
  children

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Chomsky's View of Grammar

• Universal Grammar (UG)
• Hypothetical restricting rules governing the
  possible forms that all human languages may have
• English? Strict Word Order S V O
• Spanish, Polish?Flexible S(Optional) V O
• Goal of UG - Learnability Children to acquire
  
• grammar of language within a few short years
• with little explicit training or correction.

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Chomsky's (1957) Transformational grammar

• Chomsky- the phrase structure grammar is not up
  to the job of capturing our linguistc competence
• (e.g., accounting for meaning relatedness between
  sentences such as below)
• The vampire chases the ghost.
• The ghost is chased by the vampire.

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Chomsky's (1957) Transformational grammar

• Entire derivation of a sentence is a two-step
  process
• phrase-structure rules are used to generate the
  underlying tree structure (called here deep
  structure)
• a sequence of transformational rules
  (transformations) is applied to deep structure
  and intermediate structures
• generation of surface structure

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Chomsky's (1957) Transformational grammar

• Phrase structure rules- apply to one constituent
  at a time
• Transformations- apply to entire strings of
  constituents

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Transformational Grammar

• Deep structure- the underlying structure of a
  sentence that conveys the meaning of a sentence
• Surface structure- the superficial arrangement of
  constituents which reflects the order in which
  words are pronounced

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Transformational Grammar

• Transformational rules turn d-structure into a
  surface structure representation
• Transformational rules can capture the
  relatedness in meaning between
• The vampire chases the ghost.
• The ghost is chased by the vampire.
• (the active and passive are considered two
  manifestations of the same deep structure)

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Transformational Grammar

• Transformational rules exist for
• adding new constituents
• moving constituents
  around
• deleting constituents

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Particle-Movement transformation

• Boris phoned up Vlad.
• Boris phoned Vlad up.
• Phrase-structure rules
• 1) VP V (particle) NP
• 2) VP V NP (particle)
• Whats wrong with
• this approach?

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Particle-Movement transformation

• It lacks descriptive adequacy two sentences are
  derived from two different ps rules
• Alternative both sentences derived from the same
  d-structure
• Transformational rule
• V part NP V NP part

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Particle-Movement transformation

• Boris phoned up the interesting witch.
• Boris phoned the interesting witch up
• Boris phoned up the witch with the long nails
• Boris phoned the witch with long nails up.

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Particle-Movement transformation

• the particle is shifted around the entire NP-
  particle movement defined in terms of
  constituents, not words
• Structure dependent rules

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Passive Transformation

• The witch played the harp.
• The harp played the witch.
• The harp played by the witch.
• The harp was played by the witch.
• NP1 V NP2
• NP2 be V -en by NP1

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Components of Syntax

• Lexicon
• Contains information about word grammatical
  categories (S, V, O)
• Transformational rules
• Move any category anywhere
• John can go where
• Where can John go?
• Pick up this
• Pick this up

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Components of Syntax

• Thematic Roles or Semantic Roles
• Assigns to each of the noun phrases a role in
  the sentence
• Vlad gave the pet rat to Boris in a
  castle
• Agent Patient Recipient
  Location

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Components of Syntax

• Anaphora
• Grammatical elements (pronouns) bound to
• antecedents in discourse
• Lena reminded herself of the appointment
• (Herself is coreferential)
• Lena reminded her of the appointment

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Issues in grammatical theory

• Psychological reality of grammar
• The derivational theory of complexity (DTC)
• Boris likes garlic. vs. Boris does not like
  garlic.
• but
• The witch was bitten. vs. The witch was bitten by
  a vampire.

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Issues in grammatical theory

• Psychological reality of grammar
• The derivational theory of complexity (DTC)
• The ghost from the old castle in town was invited
  by the vampire to go to the party.
• The ghost from the old castle in town was invited
  trace by the vampire to go to the party.
• The ghost from the old castle in town was invited
  SPIRIT trace SPIRIT by the vampire to go to the
  party.

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The centrality of syntax

• Bresnans (1978, 2001) lexical-functional
  grammar
• lexical entries include arguments/ semantic
  roles
• Mary kissed Vlad. Vlad was kissed by Mary.
• Lexical entry for KISS
• KISS (agent, patient)
• Kiss requires both (Mary kissed)

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Bresnans (1978, 2001) lexical-functional grammar

• The entry includes various forms of the
• word
• kiss (agent subject, patientobject)
• (be) kiss agent object patientsubject
• (Vlad kissed)

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Bresnans (1978, 2001) lexical-functional grammar

• -the major advantage of lexical-functional
  grammar all info is stored in the lexical entry
• -the derivation of passives is shorter than in
  tranformational grammar
• -more psychologically real (retrieval of items
  from mental dictionary is easier than creating a
  syntactic structure)

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FLB vs. FLN

• FLB faculty of language in the broad sense
  (systems supporting ability to acquire language
  memory, conceptual system)
• FLN faculty of language in the narrow sense
  (only the uniquely human component of language)

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• FLB might have a long evolutionary history
  (similarities in cognitive behavior between
  humans and primates)
• FLN more recent in origin and exclusively human