1 LIN 1310B Introduction to Linguistics Prof: Nikolay Slavkov TA: Qinghua Tang CLASS 22, March 27, 2007

2 Course Evaluation Course code 1310B, prof: Nikolay Slavkov Evaluation should take about 20 minutes. It is very important that you give me and the Faculty of Arts feedback. Specific comments will be highly appreciated!!!

3 FINAL Exam Schedule LIN1310 B INTRO LING I: WORDS UTTERANCES Prof: Slavkov, Nikolay Thursday 14: :00 Technology & Engineering SITE Room: H0104

4 Today Announcements and Reminders: -Great job, everyone! Test 2 average: (A). -Test 2 results are posted on the website by last four digits of your ID number. -If you have questions about test 2, come see me in office hours. (You’re welcome to review your answer sheet, etc.) -Office hours this week are moved to Friday after class (no office hours today, Tuesday, March 27). Today’s Lecture: -Continue Semantics

5 Review from last time synonyms, antonyms, homophony, polysemy, lexical ambiguity paraphrase, entailment, contradiction connotation, denotation, extension and intension componential analysis verb meaning and subcategorization conjunction, disjunction and negation

6 The conceptual system The conceptual system organizes and classifies our inner feelings, perceptions, cultural and social phenomena, the physical world that surrounds us. All of these can be expressed with the use of words and sentences.

7 Fuzzy concepts consider the following: Member of Parliament vs. A rich person => Notions with unclear boundaries are called fuzzy concepts

8 Graded membership consider the following: hockey start:Wayne Gretzky Mark Messier bird: ??? what are typical representatives of birds? [robins, magpies], [pigeons, hawks,] [hummingbirds, storks] [ostriches, penguins]

9 Graded membership p. 183 figure 6.2

10 Metaphor What is a metaphor, can you give me an example? -The vine became a snake and twisted around her ankle. => the vine doesn’t really become a snake, but we use this expression to make a point.

11 Metaphor  metaphors are not just a literary device, they are part of our everyday communication Metaphor of time as a commodity: Time can be bought, wasted, saved, spent, invested, budgeted, worth, borrowed, used profitably, etc.

12 A spatial metaphor use of words that are associated with spatial orientation to describe physical or psychological states.

13 p. 184, table 6.6

14 Lexicalization of concepts Does our conceptual system influence the way we speak? Does the way we speak influence our conceptual system? E.g. words for snow in Inuktitut, words for colour

15 Lexicalization lexicalization: the process of encoding concepts in the words of a language E.g. Inuktitut qana ‘falling snow’ what’s interesting this example? =>two concepts ‘falling’ and ‘snow’ which in English are expressed as separate words.

16 Motion verbs All languages express motion through space. But there are differences in terms of how languages express motion and the concepts related to it. Consider the following verbs: 1.The rock rolled down the hill. 2.The puck slid across the ice. 3.She limped through the house. 4.The smoke swirled through the opening. =>English encodes motion and manner =>This is called a conflation pattern

17 Motion verbs: Spanish vs. English conflation patterns 1.*La botella rodó en la cueva ‘The bottle rolled into the cave.’ 2.La botella entró en la cueva, rodando ‘The bottle entered the cave, rolling’ =>In contrast to English motion verbs which include a conflation pattern combining manner and motion into a single verb meaning, Romance languages cannot express motion in this way.

18 Motion verbs: Spanish vs. English conflation patterns p. 186 table 6.10

19 Motion verbs: Spanish vs. English conflation patterns How can we describe the conflation pattern of Spanish?  motion + path Does English also have the motion + path pattern?  Yes. with verbs like descend, ascend, return, etc. But what is the origin of these words?  Romance

20 Conflation patterns in Atsugewi (Amerindian Language) p. 6.11

21 Conflation pattern in Atsugewi how can we describe the conflation pattern in Atsugewi? => motion + moved thing

22 Back to componential analysis… Do conflation patterns remind us of anything?  Componential analysis: it seems that there exists a small set of universal concepts and a small set of options for how they can be lexicalized.  The concept of motion is associated with a number of other concepts. These are lexicalized differently in the different languages.

23 Which is the universal concept? p. 187, fig 6.3

24 Grammaticization When a affix or a non-lexical (functional) category express some concept, we have grammaticization: E.g. affixes: –ed, pl. -s, re-, in-, un- E.g. non-lexical categories: the, may, must, will, etc.

25 Hidatsa Evidentials p. 188, table 6.13