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 rule—voiced consonants at the ends of words are devoiced, e.g. /g/--/k/
Turkish: Vowel harmony—in two syllable words the 2nd vowel is dependent on the first (front vowels and back vowels go together)

2. Morphology Morphemes—smallest 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 widower’s 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 Chomsky’s Legacy
Revolutionized the study of language
Language acquisition was the inspiration
Believed that the ability to learn syntax is innate in humans (the “LAD”)
Linguist’s 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 it’s 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.”