First Week 202

For online version of Introduction to English Linguistics please click here

 

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Morphology
Prof. Dalton-Puffer & Dieter Huber
Introduction to the Study of Language 2 WS2008
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Figur 1
Figur 1
Saussure`s table
Saussure`s table

11 March 2009 The tutorials will start on April 20th which is Monday.
Tutor is Dieter Huber. Tutorials will be between 12.30 and 14.00 at Bezi, or
16.00 and 18.00 at the PC lab.

Morphology = the shape and structure of words.

Morphology
describes the shape and structure of words.
explains the shape and structure of words.

Morphology - the term

The bambification of natural beings is rather advanced in modern media products.

Bambi                     nationalization
beautify                  ratification
crucify                    beautification
-(i)fy                      -ation

Bambi + fy + ation

Semantics = the study of meaning

Semantics
wordmeaning
Spanish: pata ( animal leg) , pierna ( human leg)
English: leg is used for animals and humans.

Words are only names for things.
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's travels

Semantics
Introduction to the Study of Language 2
Sentence meaning
(a)Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. (Noam Chomsky)
This sentence is syntactically correct, but semantically incorrect. It cannot be colourless and green at the same time.
(b)She cannot bear children.
In this sentence, syntactically bear cannot be an animal. Semantically this sentence is ambiguous because of the meanings of the verb ´bear`. It can either mean that the lady is sterile and cannot give birth, or she cannot tolerate children if they are noisy.

Grammar & Syntax
Grammar= syntax+inflectional morphology.
morphology=word formation+ inflectional morphology.
syntax= How words are structured.
inflectional morphology=gender,cases,singularity,plurality.

Grammar & Syntax
studies the arrangement of words into larger units.
sequencing: on the above exapmle, bear should be a verb. It comes after the negated modal verb can.
constituency

Syntax
The French wine merchant is here. (LGAN)
Ambiguity. The wine merchant`s nationality can be French, or the British, Turkish or Austrian merchant trades only with French wine. We need more text to understand what is really meant.

Formal vs functional approaches:
                      Peter               stole                   the cake
FORMAL:         Noun Phrase    Verb Phrase         Noun Phrase
FUNCTIONAL:  Subject            Predicator           Complement
                      Actor               Process               Goal ----Differenet way of looking at sentence structuring.

There will be three lessons on Syntax during the 202 lectures.

First language acquisition
Child:Want other one spoon, Daddy.
Father:You mean, you want the other spoon.
Child:Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy.
Father:Can you say "the other spoon "?
Child:Other...one...spoon.
Father:Say "other".
Child:Other.
Father:"spoon".
Child:Spoon.
Father:"Other spoon".
Child:Other...spoon.Now give me other one spoon?
The result: Children construct their grammar.

Second language acquisition
In a room there are three womens... one is
blond..blond hair...there are three womens...
one woman is the teacher...and the other
two womans are seat in the chair...    
Acquisition and Learning and the Monitor Model for Performance

Language acquisition is very similar to the process children use in acquiring first and second languages. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language--natural communication--in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding. Error correction and explicit teaching of rules are not relevant to language acquisition (Brown and Hanlon, 1970; Brown, Cazden, and Bellugi, 1973), but caretakers and native speakers can modify their utterances addressed to acquirers to help them understand, and these modifications are thought to help the acquisition process (Snow and Ferguson, 1977). It has been hypothesized that there is a fairly stable order of acquisition of structures in language acquisition, that is, one can see clear   similarities across acquirers as to which structures tend to be acquired early and which tend to be acquired late (Brown, 1973; Dulay and Burt, 1975). Acquirers need not have a conscious awareness of the "rules" they possess, and may self-correct only on the basis of a "feel" for grammaticality. 
Conscious language learning, on the other hand, is thought to be helped a great deal by error correction and the presentation of explicit rules (Krashen and Seliger, 1975). Error correction it is maintained, helps the learner come to the correct mental representation of the linguistic generalization. Whether such feedback has this effect to a significant degree remains an open question (Fanselow, 1977; Long, 1977). No invariant order of learning is claimed, although syllabi implicitly claim that learners proceed from simple to complex, a sequence that may not be identical to the acquisition sequence.

The fundamental claim of Monitor Theory is that conscious learning is available to the performer only as a Monitor. In general, utterances are initiated by the acquired system--our fluency in production is based on what we have "picked up" through active communication. Our "formal" knowledge of the second language, our conscious learning, may be used to alter the output of the acquired system, sometimes before and sometimes after the utterance is produced. We make these changes to improve accuracy, and the use of the Monitor often has this effect. Figure 1 illustrates the interaction of acquisition and learning in adult second language production.

 

Fig.1. Model for adult second language performance

The acquisition-learning distinction, as I have outlined it, is not new: Lawler and Selinker (1971) propose that for rule internalization one can "postulate two distinct types of cognitive structures: (1) those mechanisms that guide 'automatic' language performance... that is, performance... where speed and spontaneity are crucial and the learner has no time to consciously apply linguistic mechanisms... and (2) those mechanisms that guide puzzle- or problem-solving performance..." (p.35). Corder (1967), citing an unpublished paper by Lambert, also discusses the acquisition-learning distinction and the possibility that acquisition is available to the adult second language performer.

The Monitor Theory differs somewhat from these points of view, in that it makes some very specific hypotheses about the inter-relation between acquisition and learning in the adult. In the papers that follow, I argue that this hypothesis sheds light on nearly every issue currently under discussion in second language theory and practice. Click here

Scope of Linguistics:
Aim: describe, categorize, explain.
arbitrariness: no iconic relation.
productivity: How flexible the language is. Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. This property is described as productivity ( or ´creativity` or ´open-endedness`) and it is linked to the fact that the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite. (Yule page 10)

displacement: Humans can refer to past and future time. This property of human language is called displacement. It allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the immdediate environment. Displacement allows us to talk about things and places (e.g. angels, fairies, Santa Claus, Superman, heaven, hell) whose existance we cannot even be sure of. Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property. (Yule page 9)

Functions of language (Halliday)
ideational –interpersonal –textual
ideanational: interprete the world as wee see it. Language referes to our surrounding.
interpersonal: Interpersonal function emphasizes that language is mainly a social phenomenon, but apart from enabling communication with other people it enables to project the speaker in the desired way and to represent the speaker.
Textual: Textual competence refers to our ability to create long utterances or pieces of writing which are both cohesive and coherent. Unlike animals people, by use of certain linguistic devices, are able to produce long sentences and text, and not only simple phrases.
for more information click here

Scope of linguistics

Diachronic vs. synchronic dimension
diachronic is horizontal.  Developments over time
synchronic is vertical.     For example, what old English looks like.

Ferdinand de saussure is the first person who described language as a science.

The historical dimension of linguistic variation places a temporal perspective on the dynamics of language. It is not controversial that English, for instance, has changed considerably since its earliest attested stage. The English language has undergone complex processes of reshaping and transformation and will do so in the future. Therefore, English historical linguistics is a very fascinating field of analysis indeed. But how can the historical dynamics of linguistic structure and use be approached scientifically?

The famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure tried to tackle the two dimensions of structural complexity, on the one hand, and temporal change, on the other, by introducing the terms synchrony – or synchronic linguistics - and diachrony – or diachronic linguistics (see de Saussure 1915). To exemplify these two dimensions of linguistic analysis, de Saussure used a tree analogy. Trees evolve, develop, grow. In other words, they change their shape throughout their lifetime, without, however, changing their basic anatomy. To trace the development of a tree, one can observe its longitudinal growth from being a shoot to becoming a huge plant. This temporal perspective of evolution corresponds to the diachronic perspective on language. If, however, the stem of the plant is cut transversely, a very complicated design of rings appears. This design shows the complex arrangement of the tree’s fibers – its internal complex structure. By analogy, the tree rings can be compared to the complex structure of a language. In the same way as the transversal cut lays open the structure of the fibers at one stage in the tree’s growth, the overall structure of a linguistic system can be analysed at a given point in time. This is the synchronic perspective.

Historical linguistics deals with the complex interaction of the synchronic and diachronic perspectives on language. On the one hand, it can analyse textual (or other) sources from a given period and try to reconstruct the synchronic state of a given language at a specific point in time. Moving from one such point to the other, it becomes possible to describe the history of a language , for instance the history of English. On the other hand, historical linguistics is fundamentally interested in the principles according to which languages (and its subsystems) change. However, to be able to describe such general principles and processes of language change, historical linguists much compare different temporal states of the language in question. In short, the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of linguistic analysis are closely related. It is virtually impossible to understand one perspective without the other.

Click here

In 1900s gay meant happy. But today we understand a homosexuel from this word as the first meaning.
silly:In Old English today's word was gesælig "happy", derived from the noun sæl "happiness". By Middle English it had been reduced to seli and from there it came to be what it is today. You might wonder how the meaning of silly is so far removed from its cousin, German selig "blessed, blissful". As Etymonline points out, "The word's considerable sense development moved from 'blessed' to 'pious', to 'innocent' (1200), to 'harmless', to 'pitiable' (c.1280), to 'weak' (c.1300), to 'feeble in mind, …foolish' (1576)". The original root was Proto-Indo-European sel- "happy". It is also the base of Greek hilaros "gay, cheerful", which English copied for hilarious, and Latin solari "to comfort", which underlies the word English borrowed as solace. (We thank Jeremy Busch for the silly moment in which he thought of sending this Good Word to us for review.)
Click here

Language vs. reality
arbitrariness of signs > conceptual categories
that define our world.
But: these categories are culture-dependent
For example: An English week has 7 days, however an Inca week consists of 9 days.The 9th day is a Market day, and on that day the king changes his wife.

Sapir Whorf Hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity:
Language determines our thoughts
>> and hence also our behaviour (?)
1920‘s & 1930‘s
Edward Sapir (1884-1936)
Bemjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941)
In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) (also known as the "linguistic relativity hypothesis") postulates a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. Known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, it was an underlying axiom of linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and his colleague and student Benjamin Whorf, which can be traced back to the German thought of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The hypothesis postulates that a particular language's nature influences the habitual thought of its speakers: That is, different language patterns yield different patterns of thought. This idea challenges the possibility of perfectly representing the world with language, because it implies that the mechanisms of any language condition the thoughts of its speaker community. As what the theory was called, it combines two principles. The first is known as linguistic determinism, while the second followed from this and is known as linguistic relativity. The hypothesis emerges in strong and weak formulations.
Click here




Interesting versions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis embody two claims:
Linguistic Diversity:
Languages, especially members of quite different language families, differ in important ways from one another.

Linguistic Influence on Thought:
The structure and lexicon of one's language influences how one perceives and conceptualizes the world, and they do so in a systematic way.

Together these two claims suggest that speakers of quite different languages think about the world in quite different ways. There is a clear sense in which the thesis of linguistic diversity is uncontroversial. Even if all human languages share many underlying, abstract linguistic universals, there are often large differences in their syntactic structures and in their lexicons. The second claim is more controversial, but since linguistic forces could shape thought in varying degrees, it comes in more and less plausible forms.
Click here


replica: everything smaller.

Models
Introduction to the Study of Language 2
Properties of a model:
Essential features
Abstraction:abstraction allows us to cope with complexity by ignoring non-essentail details
Idealization
(Partlybasedon speculation)

Idealized models. An idealization is a deliberate simplification of something complicated with the objective of making it more tractable. Frictionless planes, point masses, infinite velocities, isolated systems, omniscient agents, or markets in perfect equilibrium are but some well-know examples. Philosophical debates over idealization have focused on two general kinds of idealizations: so-called Aristotelian and Galilean idealizations.

Aristotelian idealization amounts to ‘stripping away’, in our imagination, all properties from a concrete object that we believe are not relevant to the problem at hand. This allows us to focus on a limited set of properties in isolation. An example is a classical mechanics model of the planetary system, describing the planets as objects only having shape and mass, disregarding all other properties. Other labels for this kind of idealization include ‘abstraction’ (Cartwright 1989, Ch. 5), ‘negligibility assumptions’ (Musgrave 1981) and ‘method of isolation’ (Mäki 1994).

Galilean idealizations are ones that involve deliberate distortions. Physicists build models consisting of point masses moving on frictionless planes, economists assume that agents are omniscient, biologists study isolated populations, and so on. It was characteristic of Galileo's approach to science to use simplifications of this sort whenever a situation was too complicated to tackle. For this reason it is common to refer to this sort of idealizations as ‘Galilean idealizations’ (McMullin 1985); another common label is ‘distorted models’.
Click here

Aims of models:
Important characteristics of original
Produce same outcome as original

Abstract systemvs. actual speech
1.langue–parole   social phenomenon. How we use language.
Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857-1913
2.competence–performance  cognitive phenomenon. How languages are used.
Noam Chomsky (*1928)

Langue:the abstract system of a language at a given moment in its history, a collective body of knowledge. social perspective
Competence: the knowledge of an abstract system of linguistic rules. psychological perspective

Taking a social perspective on language, literacy and numeracy (LLN) involves paying attention first and foremost to the everyday contexts, purposes, and practices in which language, written language and numbers play a part, including home, work and community, as well as educational contexts. People's everyday lives are complex and varied, and the roles of languages, literacies and numeracies in them are equally complex and varied. There are many varieties of any language, many 'literacies' and many 'numeracies', varying from context to context. For example, the ways in which language and numbers are used in a betting shop are very different from the ways they are used in a kitchen, which are different again from reading, writing and working with numbers in educational contexts. The LLN classroom context is very different from the contexts of people's everyday lives, and sometimes the language, literacy and numeracy being practised in the classroom is hard to relate to other contexts.
Click here

Psychological perspective: The basic premise underlying the social psychological perspective of second language acquisation is that language is a major defining atribute of a group of people, and, thus, to learn a language involves some degree of identification with the group that speaks it. That is, the language is more than a symbolic system that facilitates communication. Language is a defining behavioral feature of a cultural group, and thus nacquiring the language involves taking on patterns of behaviour of that group. As a consequence, an individual`s attitudes tword that group and tword other cultural groups in general will influence his or her motivation to learn the language, and thus the degree of proficiency attained.
Click here

 

A word is an independent part of an utterance.

 

The band`s new singer sings really well  : 7 words.

 

The word cats is the plural of the word cat : 6 words.

 

cats and cat are word forms. They are the representation of the lexeme CAT.

singer and sings are word. They are the representation of two lexemes: sing and singer.

 

cat and cats are word forms

cat  and dog  are lexemes.

 

 

sing, singing, sang, sung, sang -------all of them are verbs.

sing  and singer belong to the different word classes.

 

word: minimal independent unit of an utterance.

 

Lexeme: dictionary entry, it can cover  for various grammatical shapes such as a dictionary entry.

 

the smallest meaningful unit in a language is called morpheme.

 

black-eyed

black-eye-d

black-eye-d pea-s : 5 morphemes.

 

If a word consists of several morphemes, then it is polymorphemic.

Polymorphemic  / complex words : several morphemes.

Monomorphemic / simplex words : consist of only one morpheme.

 

 

Affixes

1.  Prefix     occurs in English

2.  Suffix     occurs in English

3.  infix       appear in certain circumstances.

4.  Circumfix   appear in historical texts in English. In German, it still appears in ge-----t    gemacht.

 

Morpheme:  abstract category that exists in our minds.

Morph: physical realisation.  For more information in detail from the Intorduction to English Linguistics please click here

 

THE END.