Download LANE 424 Seminars in Linguistics

11/10/2015
LANE 424 Seminars in
Linguistics
INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLINGUISTICS – CHAPTER 1
DR. LOAY BALKHAIR
1
Today
• What is language?
•Language analysis.
•Ambiguity and ungrammaticality
2
1
11/10/2015
What is language?
• what communication system can be classified as language?
3
What is language?
• what communication system can be classified as language?
A baby cries when he is hungry.
A pet cat scratches on the cupboard’s door where its food is stored when it is hungry.
A bee moves in a certain way to inform other bees where nectars can be found.
A child says “I hate vegetables, and I won’t eat them”.
4
2
11/10/2015
What is language?
Does each one of these cases communicate a
massage?
Yes.
-
A baby cries when he is hungry.
-
A bee moves in a certain way to
inform other bees where nectars can
be found.
-
A pet cat scratches on the cupboard’s
door where its food is stored when it
is hungry.
-
A child says “I hate vegetables, and I
won’t eat them”.
Which of these cases represent the use of language?
The last one.
What is the difference between the last case the rest
of the cases?
Four aspects: hierarchical structure, infinite
creativity, expressing displaced concepts, and being
rule-governed.
5
Hierarchical Structure
Human language has a unique feature of hierarchical structure
which means being able to breakdown larger units of language
into smaller units of analysis.
Look at the example of the child’s utterance:
“I hate vegetables, and I won’t eat them”
This utterance contains smaller units like words (hate,
vegetable, eat) and sounds (v, s, a, m) that can be combined in
different ways to produce different utterance:
“I won’t eat vegetables. I hate them”
Can we breakdown a baby’s cry or a cat’s meows into smaller
discrete units and then combine these units to form a different
message?
6
3
11/10/2015
Infinite Creativity
Another unique feature of human language is infinite creativity. That
is, users of a language can produce and understand an unlimited
number of well-formed sentences in their language.
7
Displaced Concepts
Another major difference between human language and animal
language is that humans can express imaginary situations with their
language. Human language is unique as it allows us to talk about
absent, or displaced concepts.
Animals on the other hand can only express and use their
communication methods as a response to immediate environmental
stimuli. For example, a cat who just ate enough won’t scratch on the
cupboard door just to let you know that it will be hungry at 9 pm when
it is time for her next meal!
8
4
11/10/2015
Language is rule-governed
Human language is rule-governed.
There are set of rules that dictate correct and incorrect ways to use a
language.
On the other hand, there’s no right or wrong way for a baby to cry or a
dog to bark. Human language must follow a set of rules, so a child may
not say:
“Vegetables I like not, eat and them won’t I”
9
Language is rule-governed
The rules of a language are arbitrary in nature. There is no real
reason why in English the subject comes before the verb and in
Arabic the verb comes before the subject.
S
V
Ahmed went to the shop
‫ذهب أحمد الى المتجر‬
S
V
10
5
11/10/2015
Language is rule-governed
Rules are not the only arbitrary thing about languages. Words used
to describe things (entities), actions and qualities in general are also
arbitrary.
/triː/
/kɑːr/
Tree
Car
Words are symbols that substitute one thing (the combination of the
sounds of the word car) with another thing (a four-wheel vehicle
that carries people).
11
What is language?
The rules of the grammar and the words used in the language are arbitrary in
general, but speakers of the language agree and follow these words and rules.
These rules and words are different from language to language, but the
difference is not without limits. There are some constraints (rules) that are
shared by many human languages which can reflect the nature of human
cognition.
For example, all languages have syntactic categories (grammatical classes) such
as verbs and nouns. Properties shared by all languages are called linguistic
universals.
12
6
11/10/2015
What is language?
Is language species-specific?
Language is a unique human behavior. In childhood, Human start acquiring a
language very quickly in a very short period without overt instructions.
Some animas like bees, birds, dolphins and nonhuman primates can exchange
complex communicative messages. However, their linguistics abilities do not
exceed that of young children. Therefore, language is species-specific (an ability
that is uniquely specific to a particular species, which is humans in this case).
13
Language Analysis
We must know how to analyze language if
we want to study the psychology of the
language (psycholinguistics).
Linguistics is the study of language in its
various aspects with the primary concern of
the structure of languages. The structure is
the set of rules for forming acceptable
utterances in a language.
14
7
11/10/2015
Language Analysis
What is the sources of knowledge about a language’s acceptable “grammatical”
use of words and grammar?
Who can say that a particular utterance in acceptable “grammatical” or
unacceptable “ungrammatical” in a particular language?
Linguists take as their data what people say and what people find acceptable in
language use.
This knowledge is subconscious in native speakers; we may be able to say
whether or not something is acceptable without explaining why.
15
Language Analysis
An individual’s mental grammar includes a set of ‘instructions’ in the
following areas:
(i) PHONETICS (sounds) and PHONOLOGY (possible combinations of sounds).
PP.8-13
(ii) LEXICON (words and their meanings). PP.13-14
(iii) MORPHOLOGY (how words are structured – e.g.
antidisestablishmentarianism). PP.14-16
(iv) SYNTAX (how words combine to form sentences) PP.16-27
(v) SEMANTICS (how meaning is derived from sentences). PP.13-14, 27-29
16
8
11/10/2015
Ambiguity and Ungrammaticality
Our knowledge of the grammar of a language allow us to detect ambiguity (an utterance that
can have different meanings) and ungrammaticality.
Example of an ambiguous utterance:
The policeman chased the man with a dog
Example of an ungrammatical utterance:
*the policeman the man with a dog chased
17
Ambiguity and Ungrammaticality
Read the following sentences and decide if they are ambiguous or ungrammatical:
1- The sailor saw the girl with a telescope.
2- Man eating piranha mistakenly sold as pet fish.
saw the [N girl [with a telescope]]
[VP saw the girl] with a telescope
Man [VP eating piranha] mistakenly sold as pet fish
[VP Man(-)eating piranha] mistakenly sold as pet fish
3- Doctors help dog bite victim.
4- They ran down the business ✓
They ran the business down ✓
Squad [VP helps dog] [(to) bite victim]
Squad helps [N dog-bite] [victim]
5- They ran down the hill ✓
*They ran the hill down
18
9
11/10/2015
Any questions?
19
Thank you
20
10