Download Words and morphemes

Language and Cognition
Colombo, June 2011
Day 1
Introduction to Linguistic Theory, Part 2
Plan
• Identifying syntactic categories
• Words and morphemes
• Brown’s stages of morphosyntactic
development
• MLU (mean length of utterance)
Nouns
• can have a plural –s inflection
• cannot take any of the following inflectional and derivational
affixes:
present tense –ing
comparative –er
negating un- or inadverbializing –ly
nominalizing –ness
• can be premodified by adjectives or a determiner
• can complete a sentence like We have no -----• Semantic information: mass nouns vs. count nouns
Verbs
• can have a present tense –ing inflection
• some can take an un- or in- negating prefix (e.g. untie,
invalidate)
• cannot take any of the following inflectional or derivational
affixes:
plural –s
comparative –er
adverbializing –ly
nominalizing –ness
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•
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can occur after infinitival to
can complete a sentence like They / it can -----can be modified by an adverb
can be transitive, intransitive or ditransitive
Adjectives
• can take the following derivational affixes:
comparative –er
negating prefixes un- or inadverbializing suffix –ly
nominalizing suffix –ness
• cannot take the following inflectional affixes:
plural –s
present tense –ing
• can occur after very (if gradable)
• can be stacked
• can occur in structures like
She is very ------
Adverbs
• tend to end in –ly
• can take the following derivational affixes:
comparative –er
negating un- or innominalizing –ness
• cannot take the following inflectional and derivational affixes:
plural –s
present tense –ing
adverbializing –ly
•
•
•
•
can occur after very (if gradable)
can appear in structures like She ran very ----cannot appear in structures like She is very ---can postmodify the verb in structures like
She behaved ---He treats her ----
Determiners
• premodify nouns, and determine the referential or
quantificational properties of the noun expressions that
follow them
• determiners come in two main types, defined semantically:
referential determiners – tell us about referential properties
of the noun
articles
: the, a
possessives: my, your, his
demonstratives: this, that, these, those
some other things – e.g. both, either
• quantificational determiners – tell us about quantificational
properties of the noun
some, many, most, every, all
Determiners
• determiners cannot be stacked ( so are not like adjectives)
• sometimes two determiners can appear together, but such constructions
are very restricted and seem to be limited to the co-occurrence of a
quantifier and another Det
the many books, all my children
• determiners (apart from possessives and the) seem to have individual
restrictions as to the kinds of noun they can modify – again, this shows
that Det are not like Adj:
a modifies a singular count noun
much modifies a mass noun
several modifies a plural count noun
more modifies a plural count noun or a mass noun
demonstratives agree for number
Pronouns
• the most familiar kind is personal pronouns: these do not = people
• they encode the grammatical properties of PERSON and NUMBER, and they also
vary with regard to GENDER and CASE
PERSON NUMBER
1
1
2
3
3
3
3
Singular
Plural
Sing / Pl
Singular
Singular
Singular
Plural
GENDER
M/F
M/F
M/F
Masculine
Feminine
Neutral
M/F
CASE
NOMINATIVE
ACCUSATIVE
I
we
you
he
she
it
they
me
us
you
him
her
it
them
Pronouns
• so pronouns do not pick out an entity in the world, like nouns do; they
encode bundles of grammatical features
• some words belong to the class of both determiners and pronouns;
because most of these do not change their form depending on their use,
we have to use substitution to decide which class they belong to in a
particular sentence
•
Some children were ill / Some were ill
•
Both cats were sick / Both were sick
•
I prefer this book / I prefer this
•
I don’t have any cigarettes / I don’t have any
•
No student failed the test / None failed the test
•
It’s my teddy / It’s mine
Auxiliaries
• can only be followed by another verb
• mark grammatical properties of the following verb:
tense
aspect
voice
mood
• can undergo inversion to form yes/no questions
• can be directly negated by a following not
• can appear in sentence-final ‘tag questions’
Infinitival to
• infinitival to is like an Aux as well: Chomsky compared it to
the auxiliary should
– they appear in the same positions in a clause
– they both take an infinitival verb as a complement
– they both allow ellipsis of their complement
• infinitival to is not like a preposition: it takes a verb phrase as
its complement (P takes a nominal element), and it can’t be
modified by right or straight
• infinitival to and Aux are both labelled I, or INFL (for
INFLECTIONAL ELEMENT)
Complementizers
• are grammatical markers that indicate a complement
clause
The report that war had broken out
I don’t know whether she smokes
I am anxious for you to do well
• they indicate whether the clause they introduce is tensed
or not
• they mark illocutionary force of the complement clause –
i.e. its semantic / pragmatic function:
declarative
interrogative
resultative
Complementizers
• not like prepositions: they take a whole clause
as a complement (prepositions take a nominal
complement)
I am hoping for a pay rise
=P
I am hoping for you to enjoy this class = C
• not like determiners: phonological evidence
I’m not sure that you did it right
I want that book
Prepositions
• note that prepositions fall in many ways between the
lexical vs functional divide
• many prepositions do have antonyms, and therefore
could be thought of as having descriptive content
(e.g. under/over, to/from, with/without, in/out,
up/down)
• but many prepositions do not have antonyms, and
do not seem to pick out any particular spatial or
temporal relationship; they perform a function, such
as case assignment (e.g. of, by, for…..)
• prepositions are a closed class
Prepositions
• do not vary their form, so cannot take any of the
following inflectional and derivational affixes:
plural –s
present tense –ing
comparative –er
negating prefixes un- or inadverbializing –ly
nominalizing –ness
• can often be intensified by a word like right or
straight
• can be transitive or intransitive
Substitution
• When you’re not sure what kind of phrase or word
an item is, use substitution
• This just means taking a word or phrase you are sure
of, and inserting it in place
• If you end up with a grammatical sentence, you know
the category of the item you’re working with
• If not, try something else (morphosyntactic evidence,
semantic or phonological information, educated
guesswork…)
Exercise
• Identify the word class of each of the italicized words in the
following sentences. Give reasons for your analysis and identify any
problems.
1. This hedgehog is eating a beetle.
2. The car came round the corner.
3. The moon is round tonight.
4. The exams have come round again.
5. I gave you a book for her.
6. Fred asked if he should explain things to her.
7. He is anxious for her to do well.
8. He must really squirm.
9. Have you got any idea what that was about?
10. Karen said that she hadn’t got any.
Change of pace…
• We’re starting to have some background and a
vocabulary that allows us to discuss problems
of language in a relatively technical way
• Before we continue to develop those tools,
we’re going to lay some foundations for
putting all this information into perspective
• On to some background/revision about child
language acquisition, especially with reference
to morphology and syntax
Roger Brown
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Studied Adam, Eve and Sarah
Wrote: “A First Language” (1973)
MLU
14 grammatical morphemes
Trained ~90% of the top language
acquisition researchers
• Divided the language development
into 5 stages
• (mainly focused on I, II)
Brown’s five stages
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I: 1.0 -- 2.0 MLU
II: 2.0 -- 2.5 MLU
III: 2.5 – 3.0 MLU
IV: 3.0 – 3.5 MLU
V: 3.5 – 4.0 MLU
One-word speech
• FIrst utterances are single words
– plus occasional “unanalyzed” phrases
– Look-at-that Open-the-door
• rarely use words simply for naming objects
• Often expresses relations and predicates
(aboutness)
• “Daddy” = Daddy’s slippers
• When using language in everyday speech we do
not simply name things, but we say things about
them.
Semantic Relations in 1-word stage
• POSSESSION: “Daddy” (=slippers)
• IMPERATIVE “Open” = open the jar
“blow” = blow my nose
• NEGATIVE
“no” = negate actions
• LOCATION
“down” = getting down
from high chair
• RECURRENCE
“more”
• DISAPPEARANCE “allgone”
Stage 1
• MLU = 1.75 : First Word Combinations
• Productive use of combinations
• Lack of inflection
– MLU (morphemes) = MLU (Words)
• Lack of function words
• Assignment: Calculate MLU for one of the Adam
files in CLASSWEB
Stage 2
• MLU = 2.25 : Development of inflections
• MLU (morphemes) > MLU (words)
• Telegraphic
Telegraphic Speech
• Tends to be missing the functors (= closed
class words = grammatical morphemes)
– Redundant
– Have very little semantic content
– Children focus on meaning (?)
– only use content words
2-Word Combinations
want daddy
want that
want here
want more
Daddy go
truck go
that up
mommy up
Acquisition Order for Grammatical Morphemes
(Brown, 1973)
Order
1
2-3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Morpheme
Present Progressive
Prepositions
Plural
Irregular Past Tense
Possessive
Uncontractible Copula
Articles
Regular past tense
3rd person present tense, reg
3rd preson present tense, irreg
Uncontractible auxilliary
Contractible copula
Contractible auxiliary
Example
I driving
in, on
balls
broke, fell
Daddy's chair
This is hot
a, the
She walked
He works
She does
Ross is winning
He's a clown
She's drinking
14 Grammatical Morphemes
• Development of the closed class - Brown’s 14
morphemes.
• 90% obligatory contexts
• consistency
• Parental frequency - not correlated
• semantic & syntactic complexity - yes
90% Obligatory Contexts
Calculating MLU
• MLU is based on the average length of a child’s
sentences
• The length is determined by morphemes rather
than by words
• What does addition of a morpheme indicate?
• MLU calculation procedure:
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Transcribe children’s conversation
Divide the conversation into utterances
Divide the utterances into morphemes
Count the number of morphemes in the first 100
utterances, then divide the total by 100
MLU calculations
• Speech sample:
• “Mommy, want cookie. No dinner! Drink
juice.”
• How many utterances?
• How many morphemes?
• What is the MLU?