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PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Some basic linguistic theory
part2
Levels of analysis
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Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
language
structure
medium of
transmission
phonetics
phonology
grammar
morphology
syntax
pragmatics
use
meaning
(semantics)
lexicon
discourse
Morphology
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Language differences
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Isolating languages: no endings, just word order (e.g.,
Chinese & Vietnamese)
Inflecting: lots of inflections (e.g., Latin & Greek)
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In Classic Greek every verb has 350 forms
Agglutinating languages (e.g., Turkish, Finnish,
Eskimo)
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Eskimo:
angyaghllangyugtuq = he wants to acquire a big boat
Angya- ‘boat’; -ghlla- ‘augmentative meaning’; -ng- ‘acquire’; yug- ‘expresses desire’; -tuq- third person singular
Psychological reality of Morphology
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Speech errors
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Stranding errors: The free morpheme typically moves,
but the bound morpheme stays in the same location
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Morpheme substitutions
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they are Turking talkish (talking Turkish)
you have to square it facely (face it squarely)
a timeful remark (timely)
Where's the fire distinguisher? (Where's the fire
extinguisher?)
Morpheme shift
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I haven't satten down and writ__ it (I haven't sat down and written
it)
what that add__ ups to (adds up to)
Psychological reality of Morphology
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Wug test (Gleason, 1958)
Quic kTime™ and a
TIFF (LZW) decompress or
are needed to see this pic ture.
Here is a wug.
Quic kTime™ and a
TIFF (LZW) decompress or
are needed to see this pic ture.
Quic kTime™ and a
TIFF (LZW) decompress or
are needed to see this pic ture.
Now there are two of them.
There are two _______.
Levels of analysis

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
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
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
language
structure
medium of
transmission
phonetics
phonology
grammar
morphology
syntax
pragmatics
use
meaning
(semantics)
lexicon
discourse
Syntax: the ordering of the words
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A dog bites a man.
Syntax: the ordering of the words
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A dog bites a man.
A man bites a dog.
• Same words, but different word order leads to a
radically different interpretation
Syntax: the ordering of the words
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A dog bites a man.
A man bites a dog.
A dog was bitten by a man.
• Not just the linear ordering
• It is the underlying set of syntactic rules
Syntax: the ordering of the words
• The underlying structural position, rather
than surface linear position matters.
S
NP
a
dog
S
VP
NP
V
bites
NP
a
a
VP
man V
man
bites
Subject
position
Object
position
NP
a
dog
Syntactic Ambiguity
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The same linear order (surface structure) may
be ambiguous with respect to the underlying
structure
– Groucho Marx shot an elephant in his pajamas
Good shot
How he got into my pajamas
I’ll never know
Syntactic Ambiguity
VP
VP
V
NP
an elephant
NP
PP
P
shot
NP
V
P
NP
in my pajamas
PP
shot
an elephant
NP
in my pajamas
Generative Grammar
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The pieces:
– Grammatical features of words
• Dog: Noun
• Bite: Verb
– Phrase structure rules - these tell us how to
build legal structures
• S --> NP VP
(a sentence consists of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase)
• VP --> V (NP)
• NP --> (A) (ADJ) N
Generative Grammar
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Recursion: you can embed structures within
structures
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So we NP’s can be embedded within PP’s which in turn may be
embedded within NP’s.
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NP --> (A) (ADJ) N (PP)
PP --> Prep NP
The dog with the bone of the dinosaur from the cave with the paintings of the
animals with fur bit the man.
The result is an infinite number of syntactic
structures from a finite set of pieces
Chomsky’s Linguistics
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Chomsky proposed that grammars could be
evaluated at three levels:
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Observational adequacy
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Descriptive adequacy
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Must be able to predict acceptable and unacceptable sentences
Explain how sentences with similar meanings are related (e.g.,
active and passive sentences)
Explanatory adequacy
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Must be able to explain how languages are acquired and the
similarities and differences across languages (language
universals)
Transformational grammar
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Chomsky (1957, 1965)
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Two stages phrase structures for a sentence
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Build Deep Structure
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One constituent at a time
Build from phrase structure rules
Convert to Surface Structure
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Built from transformations that operate on the deep structure
Adding, deleting, moving
Operate on entire strings of constituents
Transformational grammar
Phrase structure rules
Lexicon
Lexical
insertion rules
Deep structures
Semantic component
Transformational component
Surface structures
Semantic structures
Transformational grammar
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2 deep structures, 1 surface structure:
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Groucho Marx shot an elephant in pajamas
1 deep structure, 2 surface structures:
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Active/passive sentences:
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The man bit the dog.
The dog was bitten by the man.
Transformational grammar
Deep structure
Surface structure
S
S
NP
VP
NP
VP
The car
VP
NP
PP
was put the car in the garage
Movement transformation
VP
NP
PP
was put (trace) in the garage
Psychological reality of syntax
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Derivational theory of complexity
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The more transformations, the more complex
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Evidence for (trace)
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The boy was bitten by the wolf
The boy was bitten. (involves deletion)
No evidence for more processing of the second sentence
Some recent evidence or reactivation of moved constituent at
the trace position
Evidence for syntax
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Syntactic priming
semantics
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Word level
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Network models
Polysemy
Sentence level
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Propositions
Pragmatics