Download Notes from Class - Blogs at UMass Amherst

Class Notes, March 27
1.0
Overview of the State of the System
• When you know a language, you know two major things:
o The MENTAL LEXICON: a list of morphemes (words and affixes) of the language
 For each morpheme, you know the phonemes (sounds) that constitute it
(the underlying form of the morpheme).
o The GRAMMAR: rules innate to particular languages (or, all languages) governing
how the smaller pieces interact. Linguistics is the study of these rules.

PHONOLOGY:

MORPHOPHONOLOGY: How

MORPHOLOGY: How
How do the phonemes interact with other sounds? How do
they interact with their position in the syllable structure? How do the
underlying form of phonemes relate to their surface representations?
• Syllabification Algorithm (Maximize Onset Principle)
• Aspiration
• Place and Manner Assimilation
• And many, many more…
do morphemes interact with other sounds?
How do they interact with their position in the syllable structure?
•
•
•
•
do morphemes combine to form larger units?
Right Hand Head Rule
Bases and affixes
Derivational vs. inflectional morphology
Compounding vs. derivation.
• Where are we now? We are examining SYNTAX, the system of rules / part of grammar
concerning sentence formation. How do we combine words into a sentence?
• Grammatical vs. ungrammatical sentences – you have intuitions about what combinations of
sounds
(1)
a. The nervous brown cat jumped on the chair.
b. *Cat brown nervous the jumped chair the on.
• The syntax of language also concerns the rules that state how different combinations of words
relate to different meanings.
o AMBIGUITY: same string of sounds/words  different meanings depending on the
order in which the words are combined by our syntactic rules.
2.0
Categories of Words
• The rules of syntax don’t talk about particular words.
o There is no rule in our mental grammar that says specifically brown must precede
the word cat…you can put the words brown and cat together in that order, and
only that order.
o Rather, there is a rule that more generally says adjectives (A) must precede nouns
(N).
• Linguistics seeks maximally general rules.
o Why? Speakers are able to generate new, unique sentences of a given language
using words they’ve never heard combined previously.

Blick
Fergel
When speakers learn a new word, they immediately know how to fit it into
a sentence.
John gave the blick to Mary.
Sandy will fergel the cat.
• We can determine what CATEGORY a word belongs to based on the syntactic environment it can
occur in. The CATEGORY tells us what kind of word we’re dealing with.
o Let’s assume that these categories are part of the information stored in the mental
lexical entry of a particular word.
Syntactic Categories I: Content Words
NOUNS (N): dog, cat, irritation, joyfulness
A (TYPICALLY) DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC: Nouns can follow the
VERBS (V): kick, jump, fall, stand, love, know
A (TYPICALLY) DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC: Verbs can follow will
ADJECTIVES (A): tall, weird, readable, wonderful, former
A (TYPICALLY) DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC: Adjectives can come between the and a noun
Syntactic Categories II: Function Words
DETERMINERS (D): the, a, some, every, no, most, that
PREPOSITION (P): to, for, in, of, with, over, under, outside, without
SENTENCE (S): an entire sentence (kind of its own thing).
3.0
Figuring Out Some Actual Rules
PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES: rules that tell us what categories can combine and what category is
formed through their combination.
3.1
Sentence Rules
(2)
a. Toucans sang.
b. Max laughed.
c. Sandy sighs.
SNV
“A sentence can be formed from a noun followed by a verb.”
• These rules are very similar to the rules we saw in morphology
A + -en  Verb
• Two differences:
o We write the rules in the opposite direction in syntax vs. morphology
o In morphology, morphemes combine to form words (morphemes).
 In syntax, words combine to form PHRASES.
• In syntax, like morphology, we will draw tree structures to show the internal structure of
phrases…just like morphology trees showed the internal structure of words.
S
4
N
V
1
1
toucans
sang
3.2
S
4
N
V
1
1
Max
laughed
S
4
N
V
1
1
Sandy
sighs
Noun Phrase Rules
• There are many sentences that this rule can’t generate on its own, however.
• First strategy: write down as many sentences as we can think of and then write phrase structure
rules that allow us to generate these sentences.
(3)
Sentence
a. Dogs chase cats.
b. Some dogs chased the cats.
c. Old dogs chased young cats.
d. Some old dogs chased the young cats.
• We could do this for a very, very long time.
Rule Needed
SNVN
SDNVDN
SANVAN
SDANVDAN
• Even worse than wasting our time, listing many, many rules like this misses an important
generalization.
o Where English permits N, it also would have permitted DN, AN, or DAN.
• This is the generalization we will attempt to capture:
o English grammar treats the following sequences as the same sort of thing:
 N
 DN
 AN
 DAN
• All of these “things” are noun-ish. Let’s call them all NOUN PHRASES (NPs) – they are all
phrases where the noun is acting as the HEAD.
o Yes, HEAD…like we saw in morphology.
• Some terminology:
o PHRASE: a series of one or more consecutive words that act collectively like a
single word. A noun phrase acts collectively like a noun.
o HEAD: the word inside of the phrase that tells you the core meaning of the phrase;
it tells you the category of the phrase.
 The head of a noun phrase (NP) is a noun.
 The head in (3b) of the first NP is dogs. The head of the second NP is cats.
 The head in (3c) of the first NP is dogs. The head of the second NP is cats.
• Let’s write some rules for NPs.
o
o
o
o
NP  N
NP  D N
NP  A N
NP  D A N
• Let’s simplify our S rules in accordance with our new NP rules.
o S  NP V
o S  NP V NP
• Problem: Our NP rules are still pretty redundant…
o New notation: Parentheses mean that something in a PS rule is optional
o New rules: NP  (D) (A) N. An NP can be made from an optional D, an optional
A, and an N.
 An NP minimally consists of an N.
 A NP can also contain a D and/or an A.
 When both D and A are present, no only must they both precede N, but D
must precede A.
Our PS (Phrase Structure) Rules So Far…
PS Rules for NPs
PS Rules for Sentences
NP  (D) (A) N
S  NP V
S  NP V NP
We’ll be introducing more rules as we get more data.