Practicing Problems and Thinking About Linguistics Billy Clark, Middlesex University, UK Linguistics Olympiad Summer Course Corpus Christi College September 2015

Before We Start Without thinking too much about it, please answer (individually, rather than in groups) the questions on the handout...

Aims For These Sessions Part 1: Practising problem-solving Part 2: Thinking about linguistics

Practising Problem-Solving o We’ll look at two problems (which some of you might have looked at before) from round 2 of last year’s UK Linguistics Olympiad o We’ll discuss ways of tackling them o We’ll exchange ideas about problem-solving techniques in general o We’ll put into practice some of the ideas which we’ve developed during the week

Practising Problem-Solving Before trying the two puzzles I’ll show you now, think about any strategies or any other thoughts you have from this week which you think can help you with olympiad puzzles

Practising Problem-Solving I’ll now give you two puzzles to work on. Rather than racing to get to the answers think about what kinds of strategies you think can help you with each one and write them down as you work through them. After you’ve worked on them, I’ll share the explanations which are available on the UKLO website

Thinking About Linguistics Now I’ll present some thoughts about what linguistics is and how some aspects of it relate to the olympiad puzzles

Questions One way of thinking about linguistics is to say that it’s about questions Linguists notice questions and set about trying to answer them systematically Here are some which were not (directly) raised on the handout:

Why do English people say: I often go to the cinema Questions

While French people say: I go often to the cinema (‘je vais souvent au cinema’) Questions

English people say:French people say: You’re a student, aren’t you? You’re a student, isn’t it? (‘vous êtes un étudiant, n’est-ce pas?’) Questions

Some English people say: Other English people say: You’re a student, aren’t you? You’re a student, innit? Questions

Noticing examples like this can lead to other questions. We might, for example, look at: o How languages develop o How attitudes to particular forms arise o Other differences between languages o Others?...

Which of these sound natural to you? Take the lift, innit? Will you be quiet, innit? More Questions Teach me, innit?

More Questions o Why do some forms sound worse to speakers than others? o Why are some forms harder for second language learners to acquire than others? o What is the relationship between what speakers judge acceptable in a language and what is grammatical in that language?

More Questions o What does grammatical mean? o What is a language? o How is language acquired? o How is language used? o What factors interact in acquisition, usage, etc.? o How does/did language evolve? o How is language similar or different to other kinds of communication?

Olympiad Puzzles and Linguistics Puzzles As we’ve mentioned before, a key difference between olympiad puzzles and linguistics puzzles is that the olympiad puzzles are designed with solutions in mind while linguists are puzzling with questions which might never have solutions or only have partial ones.

A Linguistics Puzzle How do we form the past tense in English? Discuss in groups and see if you can come up with a rule

Past Tense Forms in English Here are some forms which should help you to work out how the past tense is formed in English: PresentPast passpassed claimclaimed landlanded dentdented

Past Tense Forms in English What about these forms? PresentPast runran flyflew singsang riserose knowknew

More Data What do these utterances by children suggest? My teddy bear cloomb onto my bed John runned away What is the plural form of mouse?

Answering the Questions Linguists aim to develop better answers to questions by approaching them systematically. This involves: o Hypotheses o Data o Methods

Hypotheses Hypotheses are statements which could be true or false. Linguists aim to explore hypotheses which: o are falsifiable in principle (they could be false) o are testable in practice (we can think of ways to test them) o would be surprising if confirmed o suggest further research We test hypotheses by trying as hard as we can to show that they are false

Data and Methods Linguists use a wide range of methods and data to aim to develop answers. These include: o using corpora (collections of utterances, nowadays usually tagged and stored digitally) o intuitions of informants o text analyses o experiments o observation of language users o interviews

Methodological Issues Each of these has particular problems, e.g. o corpora might not contain relevant examples o intuitions are not reliable o experimental situations are unnatural in various ways o observation affects behaviour So linguists have to be very careful in designing their research and critical in assessing results

Branches of Linguistics Linguistics is often divided into areas we have discussed this week: phoneticsphonologymorphology syntaxsemanticspragmatics Questions: where do words appear here? How do they relate to these areas?

Branches of Linguistics Work in linguistics is often divided into areas other than the ones mentioned on the previous slide, e.g. linguists describe themselves as specialising in areas such as: psycholinguisticssociolinguistics historical linguisticscorpus linguistics computational linguistics (and others)

Linguistics as a Whole What unites all of this work is the aim of systematically looking for answers to questions about language Linguists do this by finding data, formulating and testing hypotheses. Linguists are always on the lookout for examples. In studying linguistics, you will be encouraged to find your own data by keeping your eyes and ears open for relevant data (some examples I’ve noticed are on this presentation)

Linguistics as a Whole What unites all of this work is the aim of systematically looking for answers to questions about language Finally, I’ll tell you now about some more questions linguists have studied, relating them to some of the questions on the handout I gave out earlier...