Chapter 4 Words and Sentences

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Chapter 4 Words and Sentences
2
Overview

• From Morphology
• The analysis of words
• and how they are structured
• To Syntax
• The analysis of phrases and sentences
• and how they are structured.

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Morphology

• Words vs morphemes
• Morphemes as smallest units of meaning in a
  language
• respectful disrespectful
• roommate stirfry
• firefighter
• Manhattan.

4
Morphological Analysis

• Describing morphemes
• Analyzing their arrangements.

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Describing Morphemes Bases

• Form foundations of words
• Establish basic meanings
• English fish talk
• Shinzwani -lo- (fish) -lagu- (talk)
• Czech piv- (beer)

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Kinds of Bases

• Roots
• Serve as underlying foundation
• Cant be broken down any further
• English fish
• Shinzwani -lo- (fish)
• Stems
• Derived from roots
• By means of affixes (see affix slides)
• English fishing fishing talker talker
• Shinzwani loa -loa (fishing)
• Can have additional affixes attached
• English talkers talkers
• Shinzwani nikuloa nikuloa (I am fishing).

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Describing Morphemes Affixes

• Attach to bases
• Add grammatical information
• English -er -ing
• fisher, fishing, talker, talking
• Shinzwani hu- (to) niku- (I am)
• huloa (to fish), hulagua (to talk)
• nikuloa (I am fishing), nikulagua (I am
  talking)
• Czech -o -a -Ø
• pivo (beer), piva ((2, 3, 4) beers), piv ((5)
  beers).

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Kinds of Affixes

• Prefixes
• impossible
• unlikely
• Suffixes
• walking
• Infixes
• fanbloodytastic

• Circumfixes
• mlozi (fisherman)
• Reduplication
• mpolempole (very slow)
• Interweaving
• kitaab (book)
• Portmanteau
• Blog
• Brunch

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What Affixes DO

• Derivation
• Changing one kind of word into another
• verbs into nouns read -- reader -lo- -- mlozi
• adjectives into verbs modern -- modernize
• Inflection
• Showing relationships among words in a group
• tenses hunted -- hunting
• comparisons big -- bigger -- biggest
• persons I fish -- she fishes
• number cat -- cats mpaha zimpaha (cat/cats).

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How Many Morphemes?

• The dogs chased the cats into the bushes.

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How Many Morphemes?

• The dog-z chas-t the cat-s in-to the bush-ez.
• What is the difference between z and s?
• And what about ez?

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Analyzing ArrangementFree and Bound Morphemes

• Free morphemes are like bases
• Can stand alone
• e.g., words speak respect Manhattan
• Bound morphemes are like affixes
• Must be attached to other morphemes
• e.g., affixes -er -ing dis- -ful
• speak-er speak-ing dis-respect-ful
• But note roots can also be BOUND MORPHEMES
• e.g., Shinzwani -lo- fish, Czech piv- beer
• Hierarchy among affixes
• English derive first, then inflect
• helpers (not helpser).

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Allomorphs

• Variant forms of a single morpheme
• e.g., Shinzwani (see page 90 in textbook)
• singular-
• /shi-/ with -ri, -sahani, -kombe
• /mu-/ with -hono, -ndru
• plural-
• /zi-/ with -ri, -sahani, -kombe
• /mi-/ with hono, -ndru
• e.g., English cats, dogs, horses
• -plural
• /-s/ following voiceless stops
• /-z/ following voiced stops and vowels
• /-Iz/ following fricatives.

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How Why Allomorphs Change

• Adjusting to neighboring sounds
• called morphophonemic conditioning
• English cats, dogs, horses improbable,
  illogical
• KiSwahili W/R 4.11 (pages 74-75)
• Reflecting semantic categories
• called semantic conditioning
• KiSwahili W/R 4.12 (pages 76-77)

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Syntax

• How words combine into phrases sentences
• Note fuzzy boundary between morphology and syntax
  
• Shinzwani nitsohuvenza
• Iwillyoulike
• All one word
• English I will like you
• Four different words.

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Analyzing Syntax

• Finding and testing substitution frames
• Also called slots and fillers
• The cat in the hat
• The cat in the basket
• The cat in the tree
• Mpaha isenda mjini The cat is going
  to town
• Mwana asenda mjini The child is going to
  town
• Gari lisenda mjini The car is
  going to town
• Mtu mzuri mmoja ule -- that one
  good person
• Kikapu kizuri kimoja kile -- that one good
  basket
• Gari zuri moja lile --
  that one good car.

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Labeling Substitution Frames

• Let the language be your guide
• Be prepared for different categories
• Grammatical gender
• Czech masculine, feminine, neuter
• Shinzwani human, animal, body part, useful,
  abstract,
• Case
• Czech subject, object, possession, location,
• The effect of obligatory categories
• Grammatical categories that must be expressed.

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Ordering Substitution Frames

• Restrictions
• Which words can go together?
• The hat in the cat?
• The cat exploded on the rug?
• Roasting a pot of coffee?
• Which orders are permitted?
• the black cat vs le chat noir
• (the) good person vs mtu mzuri
• Anymore I dont eat pizza?
• SVO languages and prepositions?
• The cat in the tree vs Mpaha mwirijuu.
• Let the language be your guide.

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Ambiguities

• Indicate alternative substitution frames
• Cow kills farmer with ax
• (newspaper headline)
• Put more H2O in the coffee, then the bones
• (message on chalkboard in physical anthro lab)
• Fruit flies like a banana
• (attributed to Groucho Marx).

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Kinds of Grammars

• Prescriptive
• Provides a model of proper speech
• Many schoolteachers, even today
• Descriptive
• Describes a language structure on its own terms
• Boas and anthropologists, 1900s
• Generative
• Generates all possible sentences of a language
• Noam Chomsky, 1950s.

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Generating Sentences

• Begin at the level of Deep Structure
• Phrase Structure Rules
• produce abstract sentences
• Transformation Rules
• change sentence structures
• Does time fly like an arrow?
• Phonological rules assign sounds
• Result is pronounceable sentence
• At the level of Surface Structure.

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Advantages of Generative Grammar

• Trees show structure more clearly.

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Disadvantages of Generative Grammar

• Relies on introspection
• You need to know the language well enough to
  judge grammaticality of sentences
• Assumes universal underlying structure
• Accessible through any language
• But new data continues to challenge universals
• Not as useful in learning new languages
• Working with surface level sentences
• Requires working with actual speakers
• And discovery of substitution frames