Do I Have to Pay Syntax?

Rim ember us poke in cent tense all most stall ways gun deigns word snot in ten did
Do you understand the sentence on the right? How in the world can you do it? Dr. Goodword invoked every trick in his bag to mislead you. Obviously, speakers must perceive things in sentences beyond what they receive, for there are two ways to interpret the sentence "Remember, a spoken sentence almost always contains words not intended;" yet, we respond to only one. Why? What stops us from interpreting this sentence the way it is presented in the graphic to the right?

Listening and reading are not passive activities. As your ears receive sentences in your language your mind must actively attack it for its contents. Its weapon: GRAMMAR! But 'grammar' in a different sense. Every sentence is full of ambiguities which you must resolve using your knowlege of sentence structure, word structure, and semantics. For example, what does "The British left waffles on the Falkland Islands" mean? The political left in England can't make up its mind on the Falklands? Or the mess sergeants didn't clean up after breakfast? The words and their order are the same under either interpretation. What else can there be in a sentence other than words and their order? Plenty.
Intonation, suffixes like the -s on waffle in the sentence above, word order-all specify grammatical relations between the concepts behind the words in sentences. Our mental dictionary, the list of about 50,000 words we keep in our heads, tells us that left and waffle can either be nouns or verbs. This means that the sentence "The British left waffles on the Falkland Islands," may be parsed in two different ways. Parsing is the way we understand how words in a sentence relate to each other. We can represent the relationships of words in sentences by parsing trees, like the two below. The branches on these trees tells us how each word is related to all the other words in the sentence.
The British left waffles on Falkland Islands
Looking at the two syntactical trees of the British headline, we see that the structure we assign to the sentence depends upon whether we decide that British is a noun or an adjective. If we decide that British is an adjective, then left must be the noun it modifies and waffles must be the verb, i.e. [The British left] [waffles on the Falkland Islands (issue)]. Only Tree No. 1 is possible. If, on the other hand, we choose The British as our noun phrase, left must be the verb and waffles then must be another noun, the direct object since it comes after the verb, i.e. [The British] [left waffles on the Falkland Islands], and only Tree No. 2 is possible. The point is that we must apply knowledge about words and sentence structures which is not present in the sounds in order to interpret such sentences as this one either way. Sentence structure is an invisible but essential part of the mental processing of language.
Syntactic ambiguity is important-and not just for politicians. It is a major component of humor in all languages. For example, did you hear about the child who returned from her first visit to Sunday School and when asked how things had gone, replied that she had learned a dumb song about some cross-eyed bear named "Gladly"? Further questioning brought out the fact that her class has been taught the hymn (Keep thou my Way) containing a line similar to "gladly, the Cross I'd bear". The unusual word order led the child to misanalyze (misparse) the title of the song and assign the phrase the wrong structure; that led to the major misunderstandiung of what the song was about.
So, language tells us much about ourselves, not only how we speak but why we laugh. It makes us laugh. Still, it has been the object of serious research for 4,000 years. The magic word, to repeat, is LINGUISTICS. When it turns on the relations of words in sentences, it is called syntax (which isn't a levy on misbehavior, as you can see). The best news is that you can find out much more about it right here at this web portal.
But There are no Such Things as Words! > < Back to Directory

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An Internet Chat with Koko the Gorilla


This is the transcript of the AOL Live Internet Chat with Koko the gorilla. Which took place on April 27th, 1998, at 7pm EDT. In honor of the month long celebration of Earth Day. This event was the first ever live inter-species internet chat with Koko the gorilla. Brought to you courtesy of H.E.A.V.E.N. (Helping Educate, Activate, Volunteer and Empower via the Net), The Envirolink Network, The Gorilla Foundation, and AOL Live.

These pictures are of Koko's life, from the time she was baby being raised by Dr. Penny Patterson, to the years growing up at the Gorilla Foundation. In the past 26 years, she has raised kittens on her own, she has learned American Sign Language...with a working vocabulary of 500 words. Today, she has her own computer.

Penny Paterson and baby KokoPenny Paterson and baby Koko

The Gorilla Foundation was founded in 1976, to promote the protection and preservation of gorillas. Project Koko, which began in 1972, is the primary focus of the foundation.

HaloMyBaby is the moderator of the chat on AOL, DrPPatrsn is Koko's friend and trainer, and LiveKOKO is Koko the gorilla.

Scroll down to read the full transcript...
*****************************************************

Welcome, Dr. Patterson and Koko, we're so happy you're here!
DrPPatrsn: You're welcome!
HaloMyBaby: Is Koko aware that she's chatting with thousands of people now?
LiveKOKO: Good here.
DrPPatrsn: Koko is aware.
HaloMyBaby: I'll start taking questions from the audience now, our first question is: MInyKitty asks, Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
LiveKOKO: Pink
DrPPatrsn: We've had earlier discussion about colors today
LiveKOKO: Listen, Koko loves eat
HaloMyBaby: Me too!
DrPPatrsn: What about a baby? She's thinking...
LiveKOKO: Unattention
DrPPatrsn: She covered her face with her hands....which means it's not happening, basically, or it hasn't happened yet.
LiveKOKO: I don't see it.
HaloMyBaby: That's sad!
DrPPatrsn: In other words, she hasn't had one yet, and she doesn't see it happening. She needs several females and one male to have a family. In our setting it really isn't possible for her to have a baby.
HaloMyBaby: Do you see that situation changing when you get the Gorilla preserve on Maui?
DrPPatrsn: Yes, we do.
LiveKOKO: Listen.
DrPPatrsn: Koko wants to hear on the phone as we're doing this.
HaloMyBaby: Hi Koko! I can hear her! She breathed at me! This is so cool! In case you're curious, here's how Koko is able to participate in this chat: Dr. Penny Patterson is signing the questions to Koko from the online audience and a typist is entering for her.
DrPPatrsn: I'm working to create a family. In Hawaii, we'll have the ability to do that; she's almost assured to have a family of her own.
HaloMyBaby: So she really is looking forward to this!
DrPPatrsn: She's making happy sounds now...
Question: EFRN asks, Would Koko like to have a kitten, a dog, or another Gorilla as a friend?
LiveKOKO: dog
DrPPatrsn: She actually has two dog friends right now one kitty and two gorillas.
HaloMyBaby: SBM87 asks, What are the names of your kittens? (and dogs?)
Koko's kitten
LiveKOKO: foot
DrPPatrsn: Foot isn't the name of your kitty
HaloMyBaby: Koko, what's the name of your cat?
LiveKOKO: no
DrPPatrsn: She just gave some vocalizations there... some soft puffing
HaloMyBaby: I heard that soft puffing!
DrPPatrsn: Now shaking her head no.
Question: Do you like to chat with other people?
HaloMyBaby: That was from Rulucky!
LiveKOKO: fine nipple
DrPPatrsn: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."
HaloMyBaby: BSikor439 wants to know, Koko, Which of your paintings do you like most? Is she still painting?
DrPPatrsn: She hasn't seen her paintings for awhile. She is still painting.
HaloMyBaby: Tell us what she's doing right now!
DrPPatrsn: She's re-arranging the furniture in her room, basically. Let me move some of these boxes back. There's a lot of stuff here. Let me ask her if she LIKES to paint...one second.
HaloMyBaby: Dr. Patterson, why is this such an important project?
DrPPatrsn: We're learning so many things on many levels, many of which I did not predict.
HaloMyBaby: You've devoted your whole life to it! What are we learning?
DrPPatrsn: I had started to simply see if another species could communicate with us in another language, such as sign language. She is very creative with that language and can talk about abstract things.
HaloMyBaby: I can see that!
DrPPatrsn: Surprising that she can be so creative. What I've discovered is that she has already got the system, it's not that I gave her this system. I simply share the vocabulary with her. It gives us a window into another species. They are our closest living relatives. It tells us so much about how we've evolved...learning so much about things such as reproductive physiology how they would like to see things happen in the future....she will respond to things at a sophisticated level...she actually discriminates phoning.
Question: I've heard people say she's not really communicating -- I think she's smarter than we are-- after all, how many of us can speak Gorilla!
DrPPatrsn: Exactly! She has learned our language but we haven't learned hers.
HaloMyBaby: What new things are there to learn after 26 years?
DrPPatrsn: It says a lot about her species. Well, every day brings new surprises in terms of learning about gorillas in order to save them, but also about learning about ourselves. The things she comes up with surprise me.
HaloMyBaby: A basic earthy question for Koko from Earth2Kim: Koko, what is your favorite food, fruit, or vegetable?
DrPPatrsn: Ok...she's thinking...
HaloMyBaby: People have a lot of stereotypes!
LiveKOKO: I like drinks.
DrPPatrsn: What kind are your favorites?
LiveKOKO: Apple drink.
HaloMyBaby: SickboyRE asks: Koko, have you taught other gorillas sign language, on your own?
DrPPatrsn: Good question.
LiveKOKO: myself
DrPPatrsn: part of that answer might be that she's taught us
HaloMyBaby: She's really creative!
DrPPatrsn: She's acknowledging that answer.
HaloMyBaby: She makes up some of her own terms, like Lips for woman.
DrPPatrsn: Right and foot for male.
HaloMyBaby: Another question from the audience: Does Koko like birds? I have the bird t-shirt she painted -- I'm wearing it now! (Available for purchase at KW Heaven!).
DrPPatrsn: She's very thoughtful today, she just walked away, she's looking out the window...
HaloMyBaby: She's looking at the birds!
DrPPatrsn: There are a number of blue jays that have been frequenting her play yard, exactly! She's going to look at the birds!
HaloMyBaby: Are there any birds out there now?
DrPPatrsn: One just flew by. She expresses herself with actions. This is typical of young children.
HaloMyBaby: This is a very abstract one for her: Are you content with your life? That was from Jedi114. I'm very curious to see what she might say to that! We know she might not be able to answer everything, but we're going for it anyway!
DrPPatrsn: Koko, are you happy?
LiveKOKO: fine
HaloMyBaby: Here's one: Koko, where would you like to visit?
DrPPatrsn: That's hard because Koko doesn't travel.
HaloMyBaby: We were wondering about that.
DrPPatrsn: Her concept of space is very limited even in terms of a child.
HaloMyBaby: Would she like to go to Hawaii?
LiveKOKO: Look.
HaloMyBaby: Me too!
DrPPatrsn: She actually has travel logs of Hawaii that she watches on TV.
HaloMyBaby: Does she watch TV?
DrPPatrsn: Only public broadcasting.
HaloMyBaby: LOL (laugh out loud).
LiveKOKO: Think.
HaloMyBaby: Storm 1004 asks, Dear Koko...I've watched you for years now...your gentle spirit is inspiration for many... I'd like to know what you'd like for your birthday.
HaloMyBaby: What a sweet question!
LiveKOKO: Birthday. Food and smokes.
HaloMyBaby: SMOKES?
DrPPatrsn: You have to understand...Smoke is also the name of her kitten.
Koko, Penny Paterson, Smoky the cat
HaloMyBaby: HMBarbari: asks Koko, Have you ever tried to teach your kittens sign language?
DrPPatrsn: She still has Smokey. She's looking out the window right now...Actually, I can tell you that she has not tried to teach them sign language but she has tried to nurse her kittens.
HaloMyBaby: Wow!
DrPPatrsn: It's very important to her. She's 310 lbs. I can't get her to turn around...
HaloMyBaby: LBratt0n asks, Koko do you have an email address?
DrPPatrsn: Koko does have an email address Koko@gorilla.org.
HaloMyBaby: JAM6860 asks, You like your trainer a lot don't you? (I think she means you, Dr. P!)
DrPPatrsn: no comment...LOL. She's thinking about it. LOL.
Question: Hi Koko, you are a beautiful gorilla. Was it hard to learn sign language?
HaloMyBaby: OceanFish asked that one! I agree -- she's the most beautiful gorilla I know! ReBeL1999 asks, do you dream at night? Wouldn't it be amazing to know what a gorilla dreams!
DrPPatrsn: I asked her this once... I had to explain it. I asked her if she heard, smelled, saw things. I needed to explain what a dream was.
HaloMyBaby: What do you like to do best, for fun, asks TrukkasW? Sounds like Koko might have had enough?
DrPPatrsn: Maybe she has...
LiveKOKO: Hear the phone.
DrPPatrsn: Is there anything you'd like to say, Koko?
HaloMyBaby: We knew she might only be able to chat for about a half an hour...
DrPPatrsn: She just gave a little vocalization. She wants a little refreshment here.
Question: Were you real real sad when your cat died?
HaloMyBaby: BDurant79 asked that.
DrPPatrsn: She does remember her cat that died.
HaloMyBaby: How long ago was that?
DrPPatrsn: She does react with emotional words...That was in 1985. She's having some snacks and food here.
LiveKOKO: lips, hurry, good, give me.
HaloMyBaby: Lips is woman, right?
DrPPatrsn: Right. She's got an alligator. She's playing with her alligator and her lady doll. Oh, my! She may be doing a little acting out here.
HaloMyBaby: She sounds like she's working out a bit of aggression! I'm trying to get a picture of where you are, what it looks like?
DrPPatrsn: We're in Koko's kitchen area. There are toys all around a refrigerator, television, stuffed animals, videos. It's got a lot of stuff including a harmonica but she pushed it away, doesn't want to play with that. I gave her a couple of fabric bracelets... she's looking at them. She's putting it on her head because actually these are scrunchies.
LiveKOKO: fake, hat that
DrPPatrsn: She's pulling one of them and it's not fitting her hair.
HaloMyBaby: Does she have hair? Or is it like fur?
DrPPatrsn: She has hair.
LiveKOKO: fine
DrPPatrsn: She has fine hair. It's beautiful!
HaloMyBaby: How big is she?
DrPPatrsn: She's about 5 feet tall and weighs about 300-310 lbs. She has a big tummy!
HaloMyBaby: Koko tell us what you look like in your words?
LiveKOKO: flower
DrPPatrsn: One of the scrunchies has a big flower on it.
LiveKOKO: eat now
DrPPatrsn: She wants some more of the snack, apparently.
LiveKOKO: sleep, red red
DrPPatrsn: She's indicating the red scrunchie.
LiveKOKO: sip
DrPPatrsn: I think it's about dinner time for her now.
HaloMyBaby: How do you feel about Michael?
LiveKOKO: foot, foot, good
HaloMyBaby: foot means male, right?
LiveKOKO: nipple
DrPPatrsn: Remember that foot=male, right.
LiveKOKO: good
DrPPatrsn: She's acting out a little here.
HaloMyBaby: What about Ndume?
LiveKOKO: bad
HaloMyBaby: Oh dear.
LiveKOKO: toilet
HaloMyBaby: Uh oh!
DrPPatrsn: That's her word for bad!
HaloMyBaby: I thought he was supposed to be her mate! What did he do to you today, Koko?
DrPPatrsn: I don't know... she doesn't have good things to say about him today.
LiveKOKO: down
DrPPatrsn: What did he do today? He did something that was obnoxious, but I didn't see what happened. Maybe they had a little tiff.
HaloMyBaby: This is interesting, from the audience, not sure how you'd ask this: Koko, do you feel love from the humans who have raised you and cared for you? Ely35150 asked that. We'll see what she says!
DrPPatrsn: She's reading a birthday card.
LiveKOKO: lips, apple give me
DrPPatrsn: People give her her favorite foods.
LiveKOKO: love, browse drink nipple
DrPPatrsn: Browse is like... the little foods/snacks we give them.
LiveKOKO: koko loves that nipple drink, go
DrPPatrsn: She's kissing her alligator.
LiveKOKO: lights off good
DrPPatrsn: That's like a closer.
HaloMyBaby: That sounds like a good segue!
Koko, Penny Paterson and a flower
DrPPatrsn: She makes that sign when Ron has the lights on the camera.
HaloMyBaby: Let's let her off the hook then! Tell us that about the Maui preserve, what you're hoping to do?
DrPPatrsn: Our dream is to establish a preserve, 70 acres of land donated on West Maui by Maui Land & Pineapple Company that would be a sanctuary for gorillas including Koko, Michael and Ndume. A place where they would be safe and would be able to raise a family.
HaloMyBaby: Will you be able to recreate a natural family unit there?
DrPPatrsn: We're hoping. Not only would we have a more natural environment because the climate is more like Africa, but also we'd be able to have one male, several females and their babies.
LiveKOKO: fake
DrPPatrsn: The alligator is biting the lady doll...
HaloMyBaby: What does fake mean to her?
LiveKOKO: gorilla
DrPPatrsn: She knows that what I'm saying hasn't happened yet.
LiveKOKO: brown
HaloMyBaby: She IS smart!
LiveKOKO: bad
DrPPatrsn: So, she's indicating that "fake" is not what she has now, even though I'm talking about it and the reason we haven't been able to make it happen yet is that we're working very hard to raise the money to make it happen. It will take about $7 million, and we're less than 1/2 way there.
HaloMyBaby: So everyone, buy t-shirts -- every one is a donation to the preserve! At Keyword:Heaven after the chat!
DrPPatrsn: We're hoping that corporations and the public will help us. We want Koko and her future family to share this dream. She very much wants to have a baby. She's indicated that this is what she wants.
HaloMyBaby: Is she about finished, do you think?
LiveKOKO: good, fine
DrPPatrsn: She's now putting a comb in the alligator's mouth.
LiveKOKO: have food lips
DrPPatrsn: Ok. She's ready for dinner!
HaloMyBaby: So we should say goodbye?
DrPPatrsn: She blew a kiss!
HaloMyBaby: Good bye and thank you Koko!
HaloMyBaby: Thank you Dr. Patterson!
LiveKOKO: look
HaloMyBaby: I would be happy to come see her so she could look at me!
LiveKOKO: hat that
DrPPatrsn: She's playing with her alligator.
HaloMyBaby: What will she do now when we get off the phone? What does she eat for dinner?
DrPPatrsn: She'll be very pleased to have her dinner. She has raw vegetables for dinner. She wants to hear, but the phone cord won't stretch.
HaloMyBaby: Hello Koko? (I just asked her about her dinner over the phone!)
LiveKOKO: visitor, koko loves lips
HaloMyBaby: I love her too!
LiveKOKO: good
HaloMyBaby: I'd like to see you some time!
DrPPatrsn: She's playing with her troll doll now!
DrPPatrsn: We'll sign off now!
HaloMyBaby: Thank you and good night!

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Morphology (linguistics)
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For other uses, see Morphology.
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Linguistics
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Theoretical linguistics
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Syntax
Lexis
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Lexical semantics
Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Pragmatics
Systemic functional grammar
Descriptive linguistics
Phonetics
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Comparative linguistics
Etymology
Sociolinguistics
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Applied linguistics
Language acquisition
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v • d • e

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words (words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology). While words are generally accepted as being (with clitics) the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog, dogs, and dog catcher are closely related. English speakers recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of the rules of word formation in English. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; similarly, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
* 2 Fundamental concepts
o 2.1 Lexemes and word forms
+ 2.1.1 Prosodic word vs. morphological word
o 2.2 Inflection vs. word formation
o 2.3 Paradigms and morphosyntax
o 2.4 Allomorphy
o 2.5 Lexical morphology
* 3 Models
o 3.1 Morpheme-based morphology
o 3.2 Lexeme-based morphology
o 3.3 Word-based morphology
* 4 Morphological Typology
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 Further reading

[edit] History

The history of morphological analysis dates back to the ancient Indian linguist Pāṇini, who formulated the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the text Aṣṭādhyāyī by using a Constituency Grammar. The Greco-Roman grammatical tradition also engaged in morphological analysis. Studies in Arabic morphology, conducted by Marāḥ al-arwāḥ and Aḥmad b. ‘alī Mas‘ūd, date back to at least 1200 CE.[1]

The term morphology was coined by August Schleicher in 1859.[2]

[edit] Fundamental concepts

[edit] Lexemes and word forms

The distinction between these two senses of "word" is arguably the most important one in morphology. The first sense of "word", the one in which dog and dogs are "the same word", is called a lexeme. The second sense is called word form. We thus say that dog and dogs are different forms of the same lexeme. Dog and dog catcher, on hand, are different lexemes, as they refer to two different kinds of entities. The form of a word that is chosen conventionally to represent the canonical form of a word is called a lemma, or citation form.

[edit] Prosodic word vs. morphological word
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (February 2007)

Here are examples from other languages of the failure of a single phonological word to coincide with a single morphological word form. In Latin, one way to express the concept of 'NOUN-PHRASE1 and NOUN-PHRASE2' (as in "apples and oranges") is to suffix '-que' to the second noun phrase: "apples oranges-and", as it were. An extreme level of this theoretical quandary posed by some phonological words is provided by the Kwak'wala language.[3] In Kwak'wala, as in a great many other languages, meaning relations between nouns, including possession and "semantic case", are formulated by affixes instead of by independent "words". The three word English phrase, "with his club", where 'with' identifies its dependent noun phrase as an instrument and 'his' denotes a possession relation, would consist of two words or even just one word in many languages. But affixation for semantic relations in Kwak'wala differs dramatically (from the viewpoint of those whose language is not Kwak'wala) from such affixation in other languages for this reason: the affixes phonologically attach not to the lexeme they pertain to semantically, but to the preceding lexeme. Consider the following example (in Kwakw'ala, sentences begin with what corresponds to an English verb):[4]

kwixʔid-i-da bəgwanəmai-χ-a q'asa-s-isi t'alwagwayu

Morpheme by morpheme translation:

kwixʔid-i-da = clubbed-PIVOT-DETERMINER

bəgwanəma-χ-a = man-ACCUSATIVE-DETERMINER

q'asa-s-is = otter-INSTRUMENTAL-3.PERSON.SINGULAR-POSSESSIVE

t'alwagwayu = club.

"the man clubbed the otter with his club"

(Notation notes:

1. accusative case marks an entity that something is done to.
2. determiners are words such as "the", "this", "that".
3. the concept of "pivot" is a theoretical construct that is not relevant to this discussion.)

That is, to the speaker of Kwak'wala, the sentence does not contain the "words" 'him-the-otter' or 'with-his-club' Instead, the markers -i-da (PIVOT-'the'), referring to man, attaches not to bəgwanəma ('man'), but instead to the "verb"; the markers -χ-a (ACCUSATIVE-'the'), referring to otter, attach to bəgwanəma instead of to q'asa ('otter'), etc. To summarize differently: a speaker of Kwak'wala does not perceive the sentence to consist of these phonological words:

kwixʔid i-da-bəgwanəma χ-a-q'asa s-isi-t'alwagwayu

"clubbed PIVOT-the-mani hit-the-otter with-hisi-club

A central publication on this topic is the recent volume edited by Dixon and Aikhenvald (2007), examining the mismatch between prosodic-phonological and grammatical definitions of "word" in various Amazonian, Australian Aboriginal, Caucasian, Eskimo, Indo-European, Native North American, West African, and sign languages. Apparently, a wide variety of languages make use of the hybrid linguistic unit clitic, possessing the grammatical features of independent words but the prosodic-phonological lack of freedom of bound morphemes. The intermediate status of clitics poses a considerable challenge to linguistic theory.

[edit] Inflection vs. word formation

Given the notion of a lexeme, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of morphological rules. Some morphological rules relate to different forms of the same lexeme; while other rules relate to different lexemes. Rules of the first kind are called inflectional rules, while those of the second kind are called word formation. The English plural, as illustrated by dog and dogs, is an inflectional rule; compounds like dog catcher or dishwasher provide an example of a word formation rule. Informally, word formation rules form "new words" (that is, new lexemes), while inflection rules yield variant forms of the "same" word (lexeme).

There is a further distinction between two kinds of word formation: derivation and compounding. Compounding is a process of word formation that involves combining complete word forms into a single compound form; dog catcher is therefore a compound, because both dog and catcher are complete word forms in their own right before the compounding process has been applied, and are subsequently treated as one form. Derivation involves affixing bound (non-independent) forms to existing lexemes, whereby the addition of the affix derives a new lexeme. One example of derivation is clear in this case: the word independent is derived from the word dependent by prefixing it with the derivational prefix in-, while dependent itself is derived from the verb depend.

The distinction between inflection and word formation is not at all clear cut. There are many examples where linguists fail to agree whether a given rule is inflection or word formation. The next section will attempt to clarify this distinction.

[edit] Paradigms and morphosyntax
Linguistic typology
Morphological
Isolating
Synthetic
Polysynthetic
Fusional
Agglutinative
Morphosyntactic
Alignment
Accusative
Ergative
Split ergative
Philippine
Active–stative
Tripartite
Inverse marking
Syntactic pivot
Theta role
Word Order
VO languages
Subject Verb Object
Verb Subject Object
Verb Object Subject
OV languages
Subject Object Verb
Object Subject Verb
Object Verb Subject
Time Manner Place
Place Manner Time
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A linguistic paradigm is the complete set of related word forms associated with a given lexeme. The familiar examples of paradigms are the conjugations of verbs, and the declensions of nouns. Accordingly, the word forms of a lexeme may be arranged conveniently into tables, by classifying them according to shared inflectional categories such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender or case. For example, the personal pronouns in English can be organized into tables, using the categories of person (1st., 2nd., 3rd.), number (singular vs. plural), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), and case (subjective, objective, and possessive). See English personal pronouns for the details.

The inflectional categories used to group word forms into paradigms cannot be chosen arbitrarily; they must be categories that are relevant to stating the syntactic rules of the language. For example, person and number are categories that can be used to define paradigms in English, because English has grammatical agreement rules that require the verb in a sentence to appear in an inflectional form that matches the person and number of the subject. In other words, the syntactic rules of English care about the difference between dog and dogs, because the choice between these two forms determines which form of the verb is to be used. In contrast, however, no syntactic rule of English cares about the difference between dog and dog catcher, or dependent and independent. The first two are just nouns, and the second two just adjectives, and they generally behave like any other noun or adjective behaves.

An important difference between inflection and word formation is that inflected word forms of lexemes are organized into paradigms, which are defined by the requirements of syntactic rules, whereas the rules of word formation are not restricted by any corresponding requirements of syntax. Inflection is therefore said to be relevant to syntax, and word formation is not. The part of morphology that covers the relationship between syntax and morphology is called morphosyntax, and it concerns itself with inflection and paradigms, but not with word formation or compounding.

[edit] Allomorphy

In the exposition above, morphological rules are described as analogies between word forms: dog is to dogs as cat is to cats, and as dish is to dishes. In this case, the analogy applies both to the form of the words and to their meaning: in each pair, the first word means "one of X", while the second "two or more of X", and the difference is always the plural form -s affixed to the second word, signaling the key distinction between singular and plural entities.

One of the largest sources of complexity in morphology is that this one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form scarcely applies to every case in the language. In English, we have word form pairs like ox/oxen, goose/geese, and sheep/sheep, where the difference between the singular and the plural is signaled in a way that departs from the regular pattern, or is not signaled at all. Even cases considered "regular", with the final -s, are not so simple; the -s in dogs is not pronounced the same way as the -s in cats, and in a plural like dishes, an "extra" vowel appears before the -s. These cases, where the same distinction is effected by alternative forms of a "word", are called allomorphy.

Phonological rules constrain which sounds can appear next to each other in a language, and morphological rules, when applied blindly, would often violate phonological rules, by resulting in sound sequences that are prohibited in the language in question. For example, to form the plural of dish by simply appending an -s to the end of the word would result in the form *[dɪʃs], which is not permitted by the phonotactics of English. In order to "rescue" the word, a vowel sound is inserted between the root and the plural marker, and [dɪʃəz] results. Similar rules apply to the pronunciation of the -s in dogs and cats: it depends on the quality (voiced vs. unvoiced) of the final preceding phoneme.

[edit] Lexical morphology

Lexical morphology is the branch of morphology that deals with the lexicon, which, morphologically conceived, is the collection of lexemes in a language. As such, it concerns itself primarily with word formation: derivation and compounding.

[edit] Models

There are three principal approaches to morphology, which each try to capture the distinctions above in different ways. These are,

* Morpheme-based morphology, which makes use of an Item-and-Arrangement approach.
* Lexeme-based morphology, which normally makes use of an Item-and-Process approach.
* Word-based morphology, which normally makes use of a Word-and-Paradigm approach.

Note that while the associations indicated between the concepts in each item in that list is very strong, it is not absolute.

[edit] Morpheme-based morphology

In morpheme-based morphology, word forms are analyzed as arrangements of morphemes. A morpheme is defined as the minimal meaningful unit of a language. In a word like independently, we say that the morphemes are in-, depend, -ent, and ly; depend is the root and the other morphemes are, in this case, derivational affixes.[5] In a word like dogs, we say that dog is the root, and that -s is an inflectional morpheme. In its simplest (and most naïve) form, this way of analyzing word forms treats words as if they were made of morphemes put after each other like beads on a string, is called Item-and-Arrangement. More modern and sophisticated approaches seek to maintain the idea of the morpheme while accommodating non-concatenative, analogical, and other processes that have proven problematic for Item-and-Arrangement theories and similar approaches.

Morpheme-based morphology presumes three basic axioms:

1. Baudoin’s SINGLE MORPHEME HYPOTHESIS: Roots and affixes have the same status in the theory, they are MORPHEMES.[citation needed]
2. Bloomfield’s SIGN BASE MORPHEME HYPOTHESIS: As morphemes, they are dualistic signs, since they have both (phonological) form and meaning.[citation needed]
3. Bloomfield’s LEXICAL MORPHEME HYPOTHESIS: The morphemes, affixes and roots alike, are stored in the lexicon.[citation needed]

Morpheme-based morphology comes in two flavours, one Bloomfieldian and one Hockettian.[citation needed] For Bloomfield, the morpheme was the minimal form with meaning, but it was not meaning itself. For Hockett, morphemes are meaning elements, not form elements. For him, there is a morpheme plural, with the allomorphs -s, -en, -ren etc. Within much morpheme-based morphological theory, these two views are mixed in unsystematic ways, so that a writer may talk about "the morpheme plural" and "the morpheme -s" in the same sentence, although these are different things.

[edit] Lexeme-based morphology

Lexeme-based morphology is (usually) an Item-and-Process approach. Instead of analyzing a word form as a set of morphemes arranged in sequence, a word form is said to be the result of applying rules that alter a word form or stem in order to produce a new one. An inflectional rule takes a stem, changes it as is required by the rule, and outputs a word form; a derivational rule takes a stem, changes it as per its own requirements, and outputs a derived stem; a compounding rule takes word forms, and similarly outputs a compound stem.

[edit] Word-based morphology

Word-based morphology is (usually) a Word-and-paradigm approach. This theory takes paradigms as a central notion. Instead of stating rules to combine morphemes into word forms, or to generate word forms from stems, word-based morphology states generalizations that hold between the forms of inflectional paradigms. The major point behind this approach is that many such generalizations are hard to state with either of the other approaches. The examples are usually drawn from fusional languages, where a given "piece" of a word, which a morpheme-based theory would call an inflectional morpheme, corresponds to a combination of grammatical categories, for example, "third person plural." Morpheme-based theories usually have no problems with this situation, since one just says that a given morpheme has two categories. Item-and-Process theories, on the other hand, often break down in cases like these, because they all too often assume that there will be two separate rules here, one for third person, and the other for plural, but the distinction between them turns out to be artificial. Word-and-Paradigm approaches treat these as whole words that are related to each other by analogical rules. Words can be categorized based on the pattern they fit into. This applies both to existing words and to new ones. Application of a pattern different from the one that has been used historically can give rise to a new word, such as older replacing elder (where older follows the normal pattern of adjectival superlatives) and cows replacing kine (where cows fits the regular pattern of plural formation).

[edit] Morphological Typology
Main article: Morphological typology

In the 19th century, philologists devised a now classic classification of languages according to their morphology. According to this typology, some languages are isolating, and have little to no morphology; others are agglutinative, and their words tend to have lots of easily separable morphemes; while others yet are inflectional or fusional, because their inflectional morphemes are "fused" together. This leads to one bound morpheme conveying multiple pieces of information. The classic example of an isolating language is Chinese; the classic example of an agglutinative language is Turkish; both Latin and Greek are classic examples of fusional languages.

Considering the variability of the world's languages, it becomes clear that this classification is not at all clear cut, and many languages do not neatly fit any one of these types, and some fit in more than one way. A continuum of complex morphology of language may be adapted when considering languages.

The three models of morphology stem from attempts to analyze languages that more or less match different categories in this typology. The Item-and-Arrangement approach fits very naturally with agglutinative languages; while the Item-and-Process and Word-and-Paradigm approaches usually address fusional languages.

The reader should also note that the classical typology mostly applies to inflectional morphology. There is very little fusion going on with word formation. Languages may be classified as synthetic or analytic in their word formation, depending on the preferred way of expressing notions that are not inflectional: either by using word formation (synthetic), or by using syntactic phrases (analytic).

[edit] See also

* Affixation
* Bound morpheme
* Bracketing paradox
* Dependent marking language
* Descriptive linguistics
* Descriptive marker
* Distributed morphology
* Double marking language
* Head marking language
* Inflected language
* Lexical markup framework
* Medical terminology
* Morphological typology
* Morphology (folkloristics)
* Nonconcatenative morphology
* Noun case
* Reduplication
* Righthand head rule
* Root morpheme
* Syntactic hierarchy
* Uninflected word
* Unpaired word
* Zero marking language

[edit] References

1. ^ Arabic Morphology and Phonology
2. ^ Für die Lehre von der Wortform wähle ich das Wort "Morphologie" ("for the science of word formation, I choose the term 'morphology'", Mémoires Acad. Impériale 7/1/7, 35)
3. ^ Formerly known as Kwakiutl, Kwak'wala belongs to the Northern branch of the Wakashan language family. "Kwakiutl" is still used to refer to the tribe itself, along with other terms.
4. ^ Example taken from Foley 1998, using a modified transcription. This phenomenon of Kwak'wala was reported by Jacobsen as cited in van Valin and La Polla 1997.
5. ^ The existence of words like appendix and pending in English does not mean that the English word depend is analyzed into a derivational prefix de- and a root pend. While all those were indeed once related to each other by morphological rules, this was so only in Latin, not in English. English borrowed the words from French and Latin, but not the morphological rules that allowed Latin speakers to combine de- and the verb pendere 'to hang' into the derivative dependere.

[edit] Further reading

(Abbreviations: CUP = Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; UP = University Press)

* Anderson, Stephen R. (1992). A-Morphous Morphology. Cambridge: CUP.
* Aronoff, Mark (1993). "Morphology by Itself". Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
* Beard, Robert (1995). Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-2471-5.
* Bauer, Laurie. (2003). Introducing linguistic morphology (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. ISBN 0-87840-343-4.
* Bauer, Laurie. (2004). A glossary of morphology. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown UP.
* Bubenik, Vit. (1999). An introduction to the study of morphology. LINCON coursebooks in linguistics, 07. Muenchen: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3-89586-570-2.
* Dixon, R. M. W. and Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (Eds.). (2007). Word: A cross-linguistic typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
* Foley, William A. (1998) "Symmetrical Voice Systems and Precategoriality in Philippine Languages". Workshop: Voice and Grammatical Functions in Austronesian. University of Sydney.
* Haspelmath, Martin. (2002). Understanding morphology. London: Arnold (co-published by Oxford University Press). ISBN 0-340-76025-7 (hb); ISBN 0340760265 (pbk).
* Katamba, Francis. (1993). Morphology. Modern linguistics series. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-10101-5 (hb). ISBN 0-312-10356-5 (pbk).
* Matthews, Peter. (1991). Morphology (2nd ed.). CUP. ISBN 0-521-41043-6 (hb). ISBN 0-521-42256-6 (pbk).
* Mel'čuk, Igor A. (1993-2000). Cours de morphologie générale, vol. 1-5. Montreal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal.
* Mel'čuk, Igor A. (2006). Aspects of the theory of morphology. Berlin: Mouton.
* Scalise, Sergio (1983). Generative Morphology, Dordrecht, Foris.
* Singh, Rajendra and Stanley Starosta (eds). (2003). Explorations in Seamless Morphology. SAGE Publications. ISBN 0-7619-9594-3 (hb).
* Spencer, Andrew. (1991). Morphological theory: an introduction to word structure in generative grammar. No. 2 in Blackwell textbooks in linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-16143-0 (hb); ISBN 0-631-16144-9 (pb)
* Spencer, Andrew, & Zwicky, Arnold M. (Eds.) (1998). The handbook of morphology. Blackwell handbooks in linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18544-5.
* Stump, Gregory T. (2001). Inflectional morphology: a theory of paradigm structure. No. 93 in Cambridge studies in linguistics. CUP. ISBN 0-521-78047-0 (hb).
* van Valin, Robert D., and LaPolla, Randy. 1997. Syntax : Structure, Meaning And Function. CUP

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CHAPTER 3: MORPHOLOGY: THE WORDS OF LANGUAGE

morphe (Greek) = shape, form
-ology = "science of"

MORPHOLOGY
The study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed.

To know a word, is to know

* spelling
* pronunciation
* definition
* part of speech
* history
* non-standard/slang
* whether the word is vulgar
* whether the word is obsolete
* examples


LEXICON

* The component of the grammar containing speakers’ knowledge about morphemes and words.
* a speaker’s mental dictionary.

Each word stored in our mental dictionaries must be listed with its unique phonological representation, which determines its pronunciation, and with its meaning. For literate speakers, the spelling or orthography of most of the words we know is also in our lexicons.

Other information listed in our mental lexicon includes:

* Grammatical category, or syntactic class such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on
* Semantic properties (meanings).


Homonyms (homophones) ? Different words with the same sounds: bear bare


I. CLASSES OF WORDS

1. Lexical Content Words (Open Class Words)

* The classes of words that are defined as words which have stateable LEXICAL MEAING - The majority of words in the language apart from the few FUNCION words. Lexical Content Words are also called pen class words, since we can add new words to these classes.

Example: download : means to transfer information from one computer system to another (This entered English with the computer revolution)


Nouns (attached by the suffix -s to mark plural, take ’s to mark possessive)

One book, two books
John'sbook

Verbs (attached by the suffixes -ed, -s, -ing, -en): walked, walks, walking, brighten

Adjectives (attached by the suffixes -er, -est or use with ‘more’, ‘most’; occur with verbs like ‘be’, ‘seem’, ‘appear’)

taller , tallest, morebeautiful, most beautiful
be happy, seem happy

Adverbs (attached by the suffix -ly; or use with ‘more’, ‘most’)

nicely , more beautifully


* We can and regularly do add new words to these classes

2. Function Words (Grammatical Words) --closed class words

* The class of words whose role is largely or wholly grammatical and do not carry the main semantic content.
* They are also called closed class words since the number of function words are limited in a language.

Determiners articles the, a/an, some, lots of, few
Auxiliary can, could, shall, should, may, might, must
Negation no, not
Relations subordinate conjunction while
Intensifier very, too
Connectors and, or, but (connect two independent clauses)
Preposition in, of
Pronouns I, me, mine, he, she, and so on


II. MORPHEME

* the smallest unit of linguistic meaning.
* A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes.

Example: un+system+atic+al+ly ( the word unsystematically can be analyzed into 5 separate morphemes) A grammatical unit in which there is an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning that cannot be further analyzed.
* * Every word in every language is composed of one or more morphemes.

One morpheme boy (one syllable)
desire, lady, water (two syllables)
crocodile (three syllables)
salamander (four syllables), or more syllables
Two morpheme boy + ish
desire + able
Three morpheme boy + ish + ness
desire + able + ity
Four morpheme gentle + man + li + ness
un + desire + able + ity
More than four un + gentle + man + li + ness
anti + dis + establish + ment + ari + an + ism


1. Free Morphemes : Morphemes which can be used as a word on its own (without the need for further elements, i.e. affixes)

Example: girl, system, desire, hope, act, phone, happy..


2. Bound Morphemes: Morphemes which cannot occur on its own as an independent (or separate) word.


* Affixes (prefix, suffix, infix and circumfix) are all bound morphemes.

Prefixes

Suffixes

Infixes
Circumfixes (discontinuous morpheme)
Bound morphemes which occur only before other morphemes.
Examples:
un- (uncover, undo)
dis- (displeased, disconnect),
pre- (predetermine, prejudge) Bound morphemes which occur
following other morphemes.
Examples:
-er (singer, performer)
-ist (typist, pianist)
-ly (manly, friendly) Bound morphemes which are inserted
into other morphemes.
Example:
fikas "strong"
fumikas "to be strong"
(Bontoc Language) Bound morphemes that are attached to a root or
stem morpheme both initially and finally.
Example:
chokma "he is good"
ik + chokm + o "he isn’t’ good"
(Chickasaw Language)

3. Root vs. Stem

Root

Stem
Non-affix lexical content morphemes that cannot be analyzed into smaller parts
(ex.) cran (as in cranberry), act, beauty, system, etc..

* Free Root Morpheme: run bottle, phone, etc.
* Bound Root Morpheme: receive, remit, uncount, uncouth, nonchalant, etc.



* When a root morpheme is combined with affix morphemes, it forms a stem.
* Other affixes can be added to a stem to form a more complex stem.

Root believe (verb)
Stem believe + able (verb + suffix)
Word un + believe + able (prefix + verb + suffix)

Root system (noun)
Stem system + atic (noun + suffix)
Stem un + system + atic (prefix + noun + suffix)
Stem un + system + atic + al (prefix + noun + suffix + suffix)
Word un + system + atic + al + ly prefix + noun + suffix + suffix + suffix


4. Derivational morphemes vs. Inflectional Morphemes (Bound morphemes)

Derivational Morphemes

Inflectional Morphemes
1. Derivational morphemes derive a new word by being attached to root morphemes or stems. 1. Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical information such as number (plural), tense, possession and so on. They are thus often called bound grammatical morphemes
2. They can be both suffixes and prefixes in English.
Examples: beautiful, exactly, unhappy, impossible, recover
2. They are only found in suffixes in English.
Examples: boys, Mary’s , walked
3. Change of Meaning
Examples: un+do (the opposite meaning of ‘do’)
sing+er ( deriving a new word with the meaning of a person who sings). 3. No change of Meaning
Examples: walk vs. walks
toy vs. toys
4. Change of the syntactic category (optionally)

i) Change of category

Noun to Adjective boy (noun) + ish ----> boyish (adj.)
Elizabeth (noun) + an ----> Elizabethan (adj.)
affection (noun) + ate ---->affectionate (adj.)

Verb to Noun sing (Verb) + er ----> singer (noun)
predict (Verb) + ion ----> prediction (noun)

Adjective to Adverb exact (adj) + ly ----> exactly (adv)
quiet (adj) + ly ----> quietly (adv.)

Noun to Verb moral (noun) + ize ----> moralize (verb)

Adjective to Noun specific (Adj.) + ity ---->specificity (noun)


ii) No change of category

friend+ship (Noun --> Noun)
pink+ish (Adjective --> Adjective)
re+print (Verb --> Verb)

4. Never change the syntactic category of the words or morpheme to they which they are attached.


* They are always attached to completed words


Examples: walk vs. walked or walks (V--> V)
boy vs. boys (N --> N)
eat vs. eating (progressive) (V-->V)

* In English, inflectional morphemes typically follow derivational morphemes

Examples: unlikelihood, unlikelihoods (not *unlikeslihood)



5. English Inflectional Morphemes Examples
-s third person singular present She waits at home.
-ed past tense She waited at home.
-ing progressive She is eating the donut.
-en past participle Mary has eaten the donuts.
-s plural She ate the donuts.
-’s possessive Disa's hair is short.
-er comparative Disa has shorter hair than Karin.
-est superlative Disa has the shortest hair.





III. MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: IDENTIFYING MORPHEMES

Suppose that we collected the following sets or paradigms of forms

Paku (textbook pp.96) ( the language used by the monkey people called Pakuni)

me "I" meni "we"
ye "you(singular)" yeni "you(plural)"
we "he" weni "they(masculine)"
wa "she" wani "they(feminine)"
abuma "girl" abumani "girls"
adusa "boy" adusani "boys"
abu "child" abuni "children"

To detemine what the morphemes are in such a list, what you have to do is to see if there are any forms that mean the same thing in different words, that is, to look for recurring forms. We find -ni occuring in all the words in the right column which are plurals. Therefore, we can conclude that ?ni as a separate morpheme meaning "plural" which is attached to as a suffix to a noun.

In more complex cases, the next step will be to make a list of all the morphemes we find including free morphemes (root) and bound morphemes and indicate what the meaning of each morpheme and also whether they are root morphemes or bound morphemes. When you find bound morphemes, you also need to indicate whether they are derivational morphemes or inflectional morphemes.

Part I Linguistics

This course comprises:

* LING101 Language Description (Term 1 and Term 3)
* LING151 Introduction to General Linguistics (Term 1)
* LING152 Linguistic Fieldwork and Analysis (Term 2)

This course is available to visiting students (ERASMUS, JYA etc) as follows:

* Full Year (October to June) - students take the full course as detailed above - 10 semester credits or 20 ECTS credits
* Michaelmas Only (October to December) - students take LING101 plus LING151 - 5 semester credits or 10 ECTS credits
* Lent and Summer Only (January to June) - students take LING152 - 5 semester credits or 10 ECTS credits.

Please note that this course cannot be taken with Part I Sociolinguistics (because there is an overlap).


LING101 Language Description

LING101 is designed to introduce you to basic analytic skills that you will need in the study of language. It is taught through a single lecture each week in the Michaelmas term and the first half of the Summer Term. However, an equally important part of the course are the web-based activities that accompany each lecture. These include readings, transcription exercises and self-tests; you will also interact with a grammar teaching tool called Cytor and a corpus analysis program called WordSmith.
Course aims

* To familiarise students with the International Phonetic Alphabet and the basics of phonemic transcription;
* To give students a basic grounding in grammar and morphology;
* To introduce students to corpus linguistics and acquaint them with the use of the concordance analysis package WordSmith Tools.


LING151 Introduction to General Linguistics

In this module you will be introduced to a number of key issues in Linguistics. By the end of the course you will have a keener appreciation of what linguistics is, and a deeper understanding about some of the main topics that linguists study. The course is arranged in a number of blocks of several weeks each. There are two lectures and one seminar per week.

BLOCK 1 - BEGINNINGS & ENDINGS

In this first block we'll introduce you to the course as whole, before discussing the 'beginnings' and 'endings' of language. We'll cover both the origins of language in a person and in the human species, and we'll also examine how people learn languages other than their own. We end this block by considering the end - or loss - of language, e.g. by looking at language disorders such as aphasia.

BLOCK 2 - DESCRIBING VARIATION IN LANGUAGE

Next, we focus on variation in language. We will consider variation in sound (the phonetics of some accents of English and other languages). For example, does BATH have the vowel of START or of CAT? We will also consider variation in dialect - that is, we'll concentrate on the grammatical differences which, whilst not relating to pronunciation, still identify a speaker as being from a certain place. To do this, we'll use a case study of Lancashire dialect and describe some of its features using linguistic terminology.

BLOCK 3 - MEANING IN LANGUAGE

In this block we focus on meaning in language. We begin by looking at what meaning means - how we decode the meaning of words and what information we can glean from the context. We also examine how speakers say one thing and mean another, using pitch and pauses to create different pragmatic effects. We end this block by examining how animals communicate - do they have meaning? And is that language?

BLOCK 4 - APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND CORPORA

In the final block of the course, you will begin to apply some of the technical concepts and terminology you have learned to other areas of language study. For example, we will examine how linguistics is used in language teaching, and also how we can use linguistic concepts to study a range of literary genres in insightful ways. We end this block - and the course - with an examination of how computers are used in the study of language to enhance our understanding of it.
Course Aims

By the end of the course you will:

* have a keener appreciation of what language is, and of what linguists study;
* have become familiar with a variety of technical terminology;
* have had lots of opportunity to critically evaluate basic linguistic principles, and apply them both to English and to other languages.

Recommended Reading

Aronoff, Mark & Janie Rees-Miller (2001) The Handbook of Linguistics, Oxford: Blackwell


LING152 Linguistic Fieldwork and Analysis

All languages - and all varieties of language - are structured in terms of their sentences and their sounds. This course is an introduction to the study of language structure. It builds on the course LING101 Language Description and introduces basic notions of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Students will become familiar with how linguistic terminology is used to describe different aspects of language, and how linguists can look beyond specific detail to find similarities between languages which can seem very different on the surface. The course will give you an insight into how linguists go about the task of doing fieldwork that eventually results in descriptive grammars of languages, and will give you the tools to describe your own variety of the language(s) you speak in depth.
Course Aims

By the end of the course you will:

* have considered how language is structured, in terms of sentences, words, and sounds;
* have been given lots of opportunity to practice analysing language;
* have become familiar with how to analyse not only English but also other languages and be able to recognise linguistic similarities and differences;
* have become familiar with a range of technical terminology and be able to use it to describe language in detail.


Assessment

LING101: Tests x 2 (worth 10% overall)

LING151: Test (worth 10% overall) plus essay (worth 10% overall)

LING152: Pieces of coursework x 2 (worth 20% overall)

LING151/152: Combined exam (worth 50% overall)

How Does the Brain Form Sentences?
Complex grammar may depend on a surprisingly simple memory system

By Nicole Branan

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Forming a grammatically correct sentence may seem to require advanced cognitive skills, but it turns out that our creative language capacity might rely on a less sophisticated system than is commonly thought. A recent study suggests that our ability to construct sentences may arise from procedural memory—the same simple memory system that lets our dogs learn to sit on command.

Scientists distinguish between procedural memory, which is relevant for learning skills such as how to swim, and declarative memory, which stores knowledge, including facts and memories of events, such as one’s birthday, says Victor S. Ferreira of the University of California, San Diego. To find out which system is at work when we form sentences, Ferreira and his team exploited a phenomenon called syntactic persistence—speakers tend to use the same grammatical pattern they have used or heard in previous sentences.

The researchers tested four healthy individuals and four amnesic patients. The amnesiacs’ procedural memory was intact, meaning that they could learn skills with repetitive practice, but their declarative memory abilities were damaged, leaving them unable to memorize new facts. First, all participants heard and repeated a sentence. Then they saw an unrelated picture and had to describe it. Finally, participants heard another sentence that was either identical to the original sentence or subtly changed in its meaning or grammatical structure, or both.

Both groups tended to use the grammatical rules of the prime sentence when describing the picture; amnesic patients, however, did not remember that they had seen the sentence before. The fact that they still used its syntactic structure is surprising because it suggests that the procedural memory system is responsible for putting grammatical sentences together, Ferreira says. He adds that the findings also shed light on our understanding of procedural memory itself, which was thought to be restricted to specific experiences and motor skills. This study shows it is also able to support abstract knowledge, making it “more powerful than previously thought,” he explains.

Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Memory for Grammar".

Overview and Background

CSLI is an independent laboratory at Stanford University devoted to research in the emerging science of information, computing, and cognition. This new science had its origins in the late 1970s as computer scientists, linguists, logicians, philosophers, psychologists, and artificial intelligence researchers, seeking solutions to problems in their own disciplines, turned to one another for help.

Hoover Tower The problems that brought them together were rooted in issues that crossed the traditional boundaries among the disciplines. A shared interest in how agents, whether biological or artificial, acquire, process, and convey information forced researchers in these different fields to confront many of the same issues concerning communication, perception, action, reasoning, and representation. Many researchers saw that problems targeted by their own discipline were linked to solutions in the others, and, as interaction developed, began to view the common issues as defining a science in its own right.

CSLI's foremost goal is to provide an interdisciplinary setting for research in this new science. All of the research projects currently under way benefit from significant interaction across disciplines. Many are collaborative projects involving senior researchers from different fields. The interaction has born fruit in both expected and unexpected ways.

Besides being interdisciplinary, CSLI is an interinstitutional laboratory. Founded in 1983 by researchers from Stanford, SRI International, and Xerox PARC, CSLI has since its inception promoted collaboration between industrial laboratories and academic departments. In recent years, this collaboration has expanded to include researchers from additional universities, laboratories, and companies, both within the immediate geographical vicinity and around the world. CSLI's Industrial Affiliates Program currently includes twenty corporate members, many of which send researchers to participate in research projects on site.

This interinstitutional collaboration has had an equally important effect on the nature and progress of many CSLI projects. It has informed the more theoretical projects with an awareness of current technology and potential applications, while providing the more applied projects with access to the latest theoretical advances.

CSLI Topics

* Robotics design
* Planning and reasoning
* Speech recognition
* Machine-aided translation
* Language acquisition
* computer languages
* Text understanding
* Software design strategies

Each project focuses on one or more aspects of the use of information by natural and artificial agents. Roughly half deal with languages, vehicles by which information is communicated between agents. These in turn divide into those concerned with natural (human) languages, and those concerned with computer languages. The other half deal with a variety of questions involving the acquisition and manipulation of information: how agents acquire and use information to guide action; what information-processing architectures are best suited to various tasks; how representational format affects information processing and human comprehension; and so forth.

The information here is intended as a record of the researchers and projects associated with CSLI during 1999-2000. The purpose is to catalog the projects currently under way, and to give a brief status report on each of them. The individual project descriptions are provided voluntarily by project leaders, and no effort is made to guarantee uniformity in the scope or detail of the descriptions. In particular, we do not try to give detailed descriptions of project results, though we do point the interested reader to publications in which those details appear.

In presenting the project reports, we divide them into the following rough groupings, according to the project's principal concerns:

* Interface Laboratory
* Cognitive Science

Readers who would like more detailed information about specific research projects should consult the list of publications and references for that project, or contact the publications department at CSLI.
References

Report of Workshop on Information and Representation, ed. Barbara H. Partee, Stanley Peters, and Richmond Thomason. Stanford, CA: CSLI, 1985.

Language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Language (disambiguation).
This article is about the properties of language in general. For the use of language by humans, see natural language.
Cuneiform is one of the first known forms of written language, but spoken language is believed to predate writing by tens of thousands of years at least.

Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the type of human thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation and usage of systems of symbols —each referring to linguistic concepts with semantic or logical or otherwise expressive meanings.

The most obvious manifestations are spoken languages such as English or Chinese. However, there are also written languages and other systems of visual symbols such as sign languages.

Although some other animals make use of quite sophisticated communicative systems, and these are sometimes casually referred to as animal language, none of these are known to make use of all of the properties that linguists use to define language in the strict sense.

When discussed more technically as a general phenomenon then, "language" always implies a particular type of human thought which can be present even when communication is not the result, and this way of thinking is also sometimes treated as indistinguishable from language itself.

In Western Philosophy for example, language has long been closely associated with reason, which is also a uniquely human way of using symbols. In Ancient Greek philosophical terminology, the same word, logos, was used as a term for both language or speech and reason, and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes used the English word "speech" so that it similarly could refer to reason, as will be discussed below.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Properties of language
* 2 Origin of language
* 3 The study of language
o 3.1 Linguistics
o 3.2 History
* 4 Human languages
* 5 Artificial languages
o 5.1 Constructed languages
o 5.2 International auxiliary languages
o 5.3 Controlled languages
* 6 Formal languages
o 6.1 Programming languages
* 7 Animal communication
* 8 Lists
* 9 Notes
* 10 References
* 11 Further reading
* 12 See also
* 13 External links

[edit] Properties of language

A set of commonly accepted signs (indices, icons or symbols) is only one feature of language; all languages must define (i) the structural relationships between these signs in a system of grammar, (ii) the context wherein the signs are used (pragmatics) and (iii) dependent on their context the content specifity, i.e. its meaning (semantics). Rules of grammar are one of the characteristics sometimes said to distinguish language from other forms of communication. They allow a finite set of signs to be manipulated to create a potentially infinite number of grammatical utterances. However, this definition is self-circular. The structural relationships make sense only within language, the structure of language exists only in language. It is impossible to have a logically correct definition of a noun or verb. And logic itself concerns itself with propositions which are closely linked with content specificity i.e. semantics.

Another property of language is that its symbols are arbitrary. Any concept or grammatical rule can be mapped onto a symbol. In other words, most languages make use of sound, but the combinations of sounds used do not have any necessary and inherent meaning – they are merely an agreed-upon convention to represent a certain thing by users of that language. For instance, there is nothing about the Hindi word nada itself that forces Hindi speakers to convey the idea of "thread". Another set of sounds (for example, the English word nothing) could equally be used to represent the same concept, but all Spanish speakers have acquired or learned to correlate this meaning for this particular sound pattern. For Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian or Bosnian speakers on the other hand, nada means something else; it means "hope".

This arbitrariness even applies to words with an onomatopoetic dimension (i.e. words that to some extent simulate the sound of the token referred to). For example, several animal names (e.g. cuckoo, whip-poor-will, katydid) are derived from sounds the respective animal makes, but these forms did not have to be chosen for these meanings. Non-onomatopoetic words can stand just as easily for the same meaning. For instance, the katydid is called a "bush cricket" in British English, a term that bears no relation to the sound the animal makes. In time, onomatopoetic words can also change in form, losing their mimetic status. Onomatopoetic words may have an inherent relation to their referent, but this meaning is not inherent, thus they do not violate arbitrariness.

[edit] Origin of language
Main article: Origin of language

Even before the theory of evolution made discussion of more animal-like human ancestors commonplace, philosophical and scientific speculation casting doubt on the use of early language has been frequent throughout history. In modern Western Philosophy, speculation by authors such as Thomas Hobbes and later Jean-Jacques Rousseau led to the Académie française declaring the subject off-limits.[citation needed]

The origin of language is of great interest to philosophers because language is such an essential characteristic of human life. In classical Greek philosophy such inquiry was approached by considering the nature of things, in this case human nature. Aristotle, for example, treated humans as creatures with reason and language by their intrinsic nature, related to their natural propensities to be "political," and dwell in city-state communities (Greek: poleis)[1].

Hobbes, followed by John Locke and others, claimed that language is an extension of the "speech" which humans have within themselves, which in a sense takes the classical view that reason is one of the most primary characteristics of human nature. Others have argued the opposite - that reason developed out of the need for more complex communication. Rousseau, despite writing[2] before the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution, claimed that there had once been humans who had no language or reason and who developed language first--rather than reason--the development of which things he explicitly described as a mixed blessing, with many negative characteristics.

Since the arrival of Darwin, the subject has been approached more often by scientists than philosophers. For example, neurologist Terrence Deacon in his Symbolic Species has argued that reason and language "coevolved." Merlin Donald sees language as a later development building upon what he refers to as mimetic culture,[3] emphasizing that this coevolution depended upon the interactions of many individuals. He writes that:

A shared communicative culture, with sharing of mental representations to some degree, must have come first, before language, creating a social environment in which language would have been useful and adaptive.[4]

The specific causes of the natural selection that led to language are however still the subject of much speculation, but a common theme which goes right back to Aristotle is that many theories propose that the gains to be had from language and/or reason were probably mainly in the area of increasingly sophisticated social structures.

In more recent times, a theory of mirror neurons has emerged in relation to language. Ramachandran [5] has gone so far as to claim that "mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments". Mirror neurons are located in the human inferior frontal cortex and superior parietal lobe, and are unique in that they fire when completing an action and also when witnessing an actor performing the same action. Various studies have proposed a theory of mirror neurons related to language development [6] [7] [8].

[edit] The study of language

[edit] Linguistics
Main article: Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, encompassing a number of sub-fields. At the core of theoretical linguistics are the study of language structure (grammar) and the study of meaning (semantics). The first of these encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words combine into phrases and sentences) and phonology (the study of sound systems and abstract sound units). Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), non-speech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived.

Theoretical linguistics is mostly concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered as the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics. Applied linguistics attempts to put linguistic theories into practice through areas like translation, stylistics, literary criticism and theory, discourse analysis, speech therapy, speech pathology and foreign language teaching.

[edit] History
Main article: History of linguistics

The historical record of linguistics begins in India with Pāṇini, the 5th century BCE grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, known as the Aṣṭādhyāyī (अष्टाध्यायी) and with Tolkāppiyar, the 2rd century BCE grammarian of the Tamil work Tolkāppiyam(தொல்காப்பியம்).[9] Pāṇini’s grammar is highly systematized and technical. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root; Western linguists only recognized the phoneme some two millennia later.[citation needed] Tolkāppiyar's work is perhaps the first to describe articulatory phonetics for a language. Its classification of the alphabet into consonants and vowels, and elements like nouns, verbs, vowels, and consonants, which he put into classes, were also breakthroughs at the time. In the Middle East, the Persian linguist Sibawayh (سیبویه) made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 CE in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book, he distinguished phonetics from phonology.

Later in the West, the success of science, mathematics, and other formal systems in the 20th century led many to attempt a formalization of the study of language as a "semantic code". This resulted in the academic discipline of linguistics, the founding of which is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure.[citation needed] In the 20th century, substantial contributions to the understanding of language came from Ferdinand de Saussure, Hjelmslev, Émile Benveniste and Roman Jakobson,[10] which are characterized as being highly systematic.[10]

[edit] Human languages
Main article: Natural language
Some of the areas of the brain involved in language processing: Broca's area(Blue), Wernicke's area(Green), Supramarginal gyrus(Yellow), Angular gyrus(Orange) ,Primary Auditory Cortex(Pink)

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them falls under the purview of linguistics. A common progression for natural languages is that they are considered to be first spoken, then written, and then an understanding and explanation of their grammar is attempted.

Languages live, die, move from place to place, and change with time. Any language that ceases to change or develop is categorized as a dead language. Conversely, any language that is in a continuous state of change is known as a living language or modern language.

Making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible.[11] For instance, there are a few dialects of German similar to some dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual (see dialect continuum).

Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.)

The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

[edit] Artificial languages

[edit] Constructed languages
Main article: Constructed language

Some individuals and groups have constructed their own artificial languages, for practical, experimental, personal, or ideological reasons. International auxiliary languages are generally constructed languages that strive to be easier to learn than natural languages; other constructed languages strive to be more logical ("loglangs") than natural languages; a prominent example of this is Lojban.

Some writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, artistic or personal reasons. The fantasy language of the Klingon race has in recent years been developed by fans of the Star Trek series, including a vocabulary and grammar.

Constructed languages are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by natural languages.

This part of ISO 639 also includes identifiers that denote constructed (or artificial) languages. In order to qualify for inclusion the language must have a literature and it must be designed for the purpose of human communication. Specifically excluded are reconstructed languages and computer programming languages.

[edit] International auxiliary languages
Main article: International auxiliary language

Some languages, most constructed, are meant specifically for communication between people of different nationalities or language groups as an easy-to-learn second language. Several of these languages have been constructed by individuals or groups. Natural, pre-existing languages may also be used in this way - their developers merely catalogued and standardized their vocabulary and identified their grammatical rules. These languages are called naturalistic. One such language, Latino Sine Flexione, is a simplified form of Latin. Two others, Occidental and Novial, were drawn from several Western languages.

To date, the most successful auxiliary language is Esperanto, invented by Polish ophthalmologist Zamenhof. It has a relatively large community roughly estimated at about 2 million speakers worldwide, with a large body of literature, songs, and is the only known constructed language to have native speakers, such as the Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros. Other auxiliary languages with a relatively large number of speakers and literature are Interlingua and Ido.

[edit] Controlled languages
Main article: Controlled natural language

Controlled natural languages are subsets of natural languages whose grammars and dictionaries have been restricted in order to reduce or eliminate both ambiguity and complexity. The purpose behind the development and implementation of a controlled natural language typically is to aid non-native speakers of a natural language in understanding it, or to ease computer processing of a natural language. An example of a widely used controlled natural language is Simplified English, which was originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals.

[edit] Formal languages
Main article: Formal language

Mathematics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, and some that are more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by a combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.

[edit] Programming languages
Main article: Programming language

A programming language is an extreme case of a formal language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer, to perform specific tasks.[12] Programming languages are defined using syntactic and semantic rules, to determine structure and meaning respectively.

Programming languages are used to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. Some authors restrict the term "programming language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms; sometimes the term "computer language" is used for artificial languages that are more limited.

[edit] Animal communication
Main article: Animal language

The term "animal languages" is often used for non-human systems of communication. Linguists do not consider these to be "language", but describe them as animal communication, because the interaction between animals in such communication is fundamentally different in its underlying principles from human language. Nevertheless, some scholars have tried to disprove this mainstream premise through experiments on training chimpanzees to talk. Karl von Frisch received the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his proof of the language and dialects of the bees.[13] Current research indicates that signalling codes are the most fundamental precondition for every coordination within and between cells, tissues, organs and organisms of all organismic kingdoms. All of these signalling codes follow combinatorial (syntactic), context-sensitive (pragmatic) and content-specific (semantic) rules. In contrast to linguists, biolinguistics and biosemiotics consider these codes to be real languages.[14]

In several publicized instances, non-human animals have been taught to understand certain features of human language. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language. The African Grey Parrot, which possesses the ability to mimic human speech with a high degree of accuracy, is suspected of having sufficient intelligence to comprehend some of the speech it mimics. Most species of parrot, despite expert mimicry, are believed to have no linguistic comprehension at all.

While proponents of animal communication systems have debated levels of semantics, these systems have not been found to have anything approaching human language syntax.

[edit] Lists
Find more about Language on Wikipedia's sister projects:
Definitions from Wiktionary

Textbooks from Wikibooks
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
Images and media from Commons
News stories from Wikinews
Learning resources from Wikiversity

* Category:Lists of languages
* Ethnologue - list of languages, locations, population and genetic affiliation
* List of basic linguistics topics
* List of language academies
* List of languages
* List of official languages

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Politics 1253a 1.2
2. ^ Second Discourse
3. ^ Evolutionary Origins of the Social Brain. In O. Vilarroya and F. F. i Argimon (eds.), Social Brain Matters: Stances on the Neurobiology of Social Cognition. Rodopi, 2007, 18: 215-222.
4. ^ Imitation and Mimesis. In S. Hurley and N. Chater (eds.), Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science, Volume 2: Imitation, Human Development, and Culture. MIT Press, 2005, 14:282-300.
5. ^ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html
6. ^ http://psycserver.psyc.queensu.ca/donaldm/reprints/evolutionaryOrigins18.pdf
7. ^ http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uJTc5wlAYAUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA229&dq=Arbib+From+grasping+to+complex+imitation:+mirror+systems+on+the+path+to+language&ots=-b6u5FyQbC&sig=yupQRSaXgn43CcBKuJImHqXspwg
8. ^ http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~junwang4/langev/localcopy/pdf/christiansen03trends.pdf
9. ^ Zvelebil, Kamil. 1973. The smile of Murugan on Tamil literature of South India. Leiden: Brill. - Zvelebil dates the Ur-Tolkappiyam to the 1st-2nd BCE
10. ^ a b Holquist 1981, xvii-xviii
11. ^ "Language". The New Encyclopædia Britannica: MACROPÆDIA. 22. Encyclopædia Britannica,Inc.. 2005. pp. 548 2b.
12. ^ "What is programming language?". Webopedia. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/programming_language.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-23.
13. ^ Frisch, K.v. (1953). 'Sprache' oder 'Kommunikation' der Bienen? Psychologische Rundschau 4. Amsterdam.
14. ^ Witzany, G. (2007). The Logos of the Bios 2. Bio-Communication. Helsinki, Umweb

[edit] References

* Chakrabarti, Byomkes (1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. ISBN 81-7074-128-9
* Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
* Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
* Gode, Alexander (1951). Interlingua-English Dictionary. New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing Company.
* Holquist, Michael. (1981) Introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. xv-xxxiv
* Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM. Principles of Neural Science, fourth edition, 1173 pages. McGraw-Hill, New York (2000). ISBN 0-8385-7701-6
* Katzner, K. (1999). The Languages of the World. New York, Routledge.
* McArthur, T. (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
* Zvelebil, Kamil (1973). The mile of Murugan on Tamil literature of South India. Leiden: Brill.

[edit] Further reading

* Deacon, Terrence William (1998). The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31754-4.
* Polinsky, Maria; Comrie, Bernard; Matthews, Stephen (2003). The atlas of languages: the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 0-8160-5123-2.

[edit] See also

Study of language

* Linguistics
* Historical linguistics
* Synchronic analysis
* Philology
* Philosophy of language
* Universal grammar

Types of language and language relationships

* Dialect
* Language family
* Extinct language
* Word game

Non-spoken forms of communication

* Written language
* Sign language
* Whistled language
* Drum languages
* Non-verbal communication

Origins of language

* Origin of language
* Evolutionary linguistics
* Biolinguistics
* FOXP2 - gene implicated in cases of specific language impairment (SLI)



Religion and mythology

* Adamic language

Education and public policy

* Language education
* Language school
* Language policy
* Language reform
* Linguistic protectionism
* Official language

Language and culture

* Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

Communication with other species

* Great ape language

Semiotics

* Symbolic communication
* Symbolic linguistic representation
* Metacommunicative competence

Other

* Translation
* Second language
* Phonetic transcription
* ISO 639 - 2- and 3-letter ID codes for languages


Language portal
Wikipedia:Books has a book on: Language

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* Distribution of languages on the Internet (2002)
* The impact of language in a globalised world - Goethe-Institut
* Top Languages in the world Internet usage population and penetration report (Nov 2007)
* World Atlas of Language Structures
* Wiki of Languages and constructed Languages

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