Chapter 7 (Morphology) and chapter 9 (Syntax) Meeting 2 Chapter 7 (Morphology) and chapter 9 (Syntax)

Today’s agenda Repetition of meeting 1 Mini-lecture on morphology Seminar on chapter 7, worksheet Mini-lecture on syntax Seminar on chapter 9, worksheet Preparation for meeting 3 - About semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis (ch.10-12)

Repetition is the mother of all learning ”Bildning är det som finns kvar när vi glömt vad vi lärt oss” Ellen Key (1849-1926) Do you remember?

Morphology - the study of word structure What is a morpheme? a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function; the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning; a basic meaningful unit Compare with a phoneme: the smallest linguistically distinctive unit of sound

Words: Simple or complex Simple: Cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units: and, pig, chair, jump, berry, hospital. Complex: Can be analyzed into constituent parts/can be broken down into smaller meaningful units: houses (house + s), gentleman (gentle + man). Simple and complex words. Simple words cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units (ie morphemes), but complex words can be broken down into smaller meaningful units (ie morphemes).

Types of morphemes lexical free functional morphemes derivational bound inflectional

Free vs. bound Free - can stand alone: and, pig, chair, jump, berry, hospital, town, dog, yellow, slim. Bound - cannot stand alone: unbreakable. Tend to be prefixes and suffixes; productive morpheme. ”Cranberry” – unproductive morpheme, exists only in bound form; cranberry, huckleberry.

Lexical vs. functional Lexical – Carries the content of messages, open word classes (Ns, Adjs, Vs): zebra, yellow, hunt, twitter. Functional – Function words, closed word classes (Conjs, Preps, articles, Pronouns): and, the, a, an, but, there, it, she, under, because.

Derivational vs. … Derivational - can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: rearrange, happiness, hospitalize. Prefixes and suffixes… They carry semantic information. What is the semantic information of re-, -ness, and –ize?

…inflectional Inflectional – indicates aspects of the grammatical function of a word, without deriving a new word or a word in a new grammatical category: dogs, dog’s, faster, fastest, sings, walked, singing, taken. There are 8 inflectional morphemes in English.

Allomorphs Allomorphs are variants of a particular morpheme, e.g. ‘plural’ Give examples: -s -es Ø (zero morph) vowel change

Worksheets 1-2 …and any other questions you might have

Study Q 1 What are the functional morphemes in the following sentence? When he arrived, the old man had an umbrella and a large plastic bag full of books. Functional morphemes = conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns: When he arrived, the old man had an umbrella and a large plastic bag full of books.

Study Q 2 What are the lexical morphemes in the sentence? Haitians are used at the best of times to queuing for things; waiting is, after all, the first cousin of poverty. But in the nine days since the earthquake struck, they have become experts. (from The Guardian, Jan. 21, 2010) Lexical morphemes

Study Q 3 List the bound morphemes in these words: fearlessly, misleads, previewer, shortened, unhappier. Bound morphemes: -less, -ly, mis- -s, pre-, -er, -en, -ed, un- , -ier.

Study Q 4 What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions? It's raining the cow jumped over the moon the newest style the singer's new songs 8 inflectional morphemes in English: nouns – plural, possessive; adj- comparative and superlative; verbs – 3rd person –s in the present tense; past –ed and irregular forms; past participle –en (chosen,m drunk) and present participle –ing (running, eating).

Study Q 5 What are the allomorphs of 'plural' in this set of English words? ballons syllabi phenomena women churches children -s, -i, -a, umlaut (woman, women), -es, -ren

Study Q 6 What are the allomorphs of 'past tense’ in this set of English verbs? jumped tied ran became put -ed, -d, umlaut run-ran (irregular verb form), -a (become, became) irregular Ø (no change)

Syntax * The analysis of sentence structure The system of rules and categories that underlies sentence formation in human language. House painted student a the. A student painted the house. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. * Syntax is a component of grammar and it is the analysis of sentence structure, the system of rules and cateories that underlies sentence formation in human language. Syntax comes from Greek and it means ”a putting together”, ”arrangement”.

Noam Chomsky Language acquisition device, LAD ”I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences” Generative grammar: Explicit rules that can generate an infinite number of sentences; syntactic structures

Deep and surface structure NP + VP + NP (abstract level) Shaquille made a slam dunk. The slam dunk was made by Shaquille. Was a slam dunk made by Shaquille? It was Shaquille who made a slam dunk.

Syntactic component of the grammar Phrase structure rules Deep structure Transformations Surface structure The grammar makes use of different syntactic mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are responsible for the architecture of phrases (phrase strucutre rules), others for the determinatin of a head’s possible complements Isubcategorization – deep structure), and still others for the movement of categoris within syntactic structure (transformations).

Structural ambiguity From Yule (2006): Annie whacked a man with an umbrella. Women catch colds easier than men.

Tree diagrams S NP VP V NP N Annie whacked a man with an umbrella.

Annie has the S NP VP V NP N PP Art N Annie whacked a man with an umbrella.

The man has the S NP VP V NP N PP Art N Annie whacked a man with an umbrella.

Phrase structure rules Generative grammar: Explicit rules that can generate an infinite number of sentences; syntactic structures ”a noun phrase rewrites as/consists of/branches into an article followed by a noun” NP Art N NP Art N the ball

Lexical rules Specify which words can be used when constituents are rewritten. Example: Art a, the ”an article rewrites as a or the”

Recursion From Yule (2006:93): Mary helped George. Cathy knew that Mary helped George. John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George. Recursion!

Transformational rules Movement of constituents within a sentence. There are very, very, very advanced transformational rules… Syntax is fun

Worksheet 2 Go through answers!

For meeting 3 Yule (2006) Semantics (ch.10) Pragmatics (ch.11) The study of meaning Pragmatics (ch.11) How the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, etc. Meetings - seminars

For meeting 3… Discourse analysis (ch. 12) Bla, bla The branch of linguistics that deals with the study and application of approaches to analyze written, spoken or signed language Bla, bla

Do you speak English? Big Train BBC Comedy Ali G interviews Noam Chomsky about ”language”

YouTube clips Chimp talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lrv1CrGq3o Do you speak English? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0I7PCoy-nk&feature=related ”Ali G” interviews Noam Chomsky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro&feature=related

The end Good luck studying Goodbye!