Phonological Rules

1
Phonological Rules

• Rules about how sounds may or may not go together
  in a language
• English Words may not start with two stop
  consonants
• German Devoicing rulevoiced consonants at the
  ends of words are devoiced, e.g. /g/--/k/
• Turkish Vowel harmonyin two syllable words the
  2nd vowel is dependent on the first (front vowels
  and back vowels go together)

2
Morphology

• Morphemessmallest units of meaning in a language
• Words (lexemes) are open class morphemes
• Word endings plural s, past ed, prefixes and
  suffixes, infixes are closed class morphemes
• Typically convey tense, verb agreement,
  grammatical gender, number, negation
• English is morphologically impoverished

3
Morphophonology

• Morphology and phonology are not independent
• English plural
  Cats /s/ , dogs /z/, finches /Iz/
• Tagalog future reduplication rule
• Bili (buy), bibili (will buy)
• Kuha (get) kukuha (will get)
• Sulat (write) susulate (will write)

4
Semantics

• Meanings of words and sentences and the relations
  between words and sentences
• Some meaning relations
• Tautology a necessarily true sentence
• A widower has no wife.
• Contradiction a necessarily false sentence
• A widower has a wife.
• Anomaly a sentence with no truth value
• The widowers wife is a linguist.
• Synonymy two sentences that have the same truth
  conditions
• I am a widower.
• My wife passed away.

5
Syntax

• Rules of the language specifying how sounds,
  morphemes, and words may be combined to form
  meaningful sentences.
• Rules must generate all of the grammatical
  sentences in a language, and none of the
  ungrammatical ones
• Related to, but separable from semantics.
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• Green furiously sleep ideas colorless.
• Charles ate a sandwich.
• Charles ate sandwich.

6
Syntax Noam Chomskys Legacy

• Chomsky (1957, 1965)
• Revolutionized the study of language
• Language acquisition was the inspiration
• Believed that the ability to learn syntax is
  innate in humans (the LAD)
• Linguists task is to describe this innate
  knowledge

7
Transformational Grammar

• Phrase structure rules
• --Rules that specify the permissible sequences
  of constituents (words, phrases, etc.) in a
  sentence
• --Each rule rewrites a constituent into one or
  more other constituents
• Transformational rules
• Apply to entire strings of constituents by
  adding, deleting, or rearranging constituents
  into new sequences.
• Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure
  Distinction between the underlying representation
  of a sentence and its surface form, that is,
  what you say.

8
Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure Why?

• Three basic kinds pieces of evidence
• Ambiguous sentences
  Visiting relatives can be boring.
  The zoo contained young
  llamas and gnus.
• Similar surface form but not meaning John is
  eager to please vs. John is easy to please.
• Similar meaning but not surface form Kim
  played the guitar. and The guitar was played by
  Kim.