1. A very, very brief introduction to linguistics Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 1

2. What is linguistics? Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 2  The study of language in all its manifestations  Usually focuses on spoken language  CL often depends on written language  Borders on computer science, psychology, medicine, sociology, law, history, mathematics, philosophy, gender studies, physics, politics…  Has many fields covering very diverse areas

3. Phonetics Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 3  Phonetics studies the sounds used in spoken language  What are their physical properties?  How are they produced?  How are they perceived?  Phonetic problems:  How to classify and describe sounds?  What are the differences between English, German, French and Russian “r” sounds?  What position does the tongue take when we produce “th”?  How and why can you feel the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants?  CL: How to teach a computer to distinguish between sounds?

4. Phonology Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 4  Phonology studies the role sound plays in speech  Abstracts away from purely acoustic properties  Looks at what distinct sounds (phonemes) there are in a language  Minimal pairs: words differing in a single sound  Free variation: sounds that can be pronounced differently without a change in meaning  Allophones: sounds that are pronounced differently in different contexts  Looks at stress, tone, intonation…  Phonologic problems:  Why are homophones (weak-week, son-sun)?  What are the rules behind pronounciation?  CL: How do we tell the computer where to stress words?

5. Morphology Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 5  Morphology studies the structure of words  What is a word?  Minimal sound-meaning unit: morpheme  Bound morphemes: prefixes, suffixes, inflections…  Free morphemes: “words”  Derivational morphology  Construction of words from roots and affixes  inter+national  international  International + ize  internationalize  Internationalize + ation  internationalization  Inflectional morphology  bottle  bottles

6. Morphology Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 6  Morphological problems:  Ambiguity  What does „scarcity“ mean?  What can we find out about an unknown word?  unadd  embiggens  cromulent  What are the rules for noun plural or 3rd person singular verbs?  CL: How to teach the computer to analyze words?

7. Syntax Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 7  Syntax studies the structure of sentences  How can we put words together to get sentences?  Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. (N. Chomsky)  How do we understand the meaning of a sentence given the meanings of its words?  What syntactic theory is right?

8. Syntax Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 8  Syntactic problems:  Ambiguity  The woman saw the man with the binoculars  I made her duck  Control  I asked her to call Marta.  I promised her to call Marta.  Coordination  John and Alex and Chris and Alice are married.  “Garden paths”  The prime number few.  The horse raced past the barn fell.  The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi.

9. Semantics Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 9  Semantics studies the meaning of utterances  What meanings do words have?  How does meaning change in different contexts?  May be a question for progmatics…  Semantic problems:  Word sense ambiguity  Round, bank, on…  Scope ambiguity  Every man loves a woman  Co-reference and anaphora  Jim hit John, and after that he ran away.  The two men met. After he hit him, John ran away.  John loves his wife, and so does Jim.

10. Pragmatics Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin 10  Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said.  What do we imply by an utterance?  “John regrets that he voted for Clinton”.  “How old are you?” – “Closer to 30 than to 20.”  When is an utterance true or false?  “The current king of France is bald”.  What do we intend by an utterance?  “Could you pass me the salt?”  “It’s quite cold here, isn’t it?”  CL: Is not really capable of having pragmatics problems yet