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Lecture Four: Phonetics
Sound - Where it all begins
Language, thought, memory, speech and even writing are united by one
common factor: sound. Sound is at the core of human language. It is the
properties of sound in human language that distinguish people from animals and
plants in terms of communication, and so it is natural to begin our study of the
English language by starting with the study of its sounds. This will come in two
parts. The foundation lecture (this one) will be on phonetics, and the follow-up
lecture will be on phonology.
Defining phonetics
Phonetics is ‘the scientific study of speech’ (Peter Roach, ‘Introducing
Phonetics’). It ‘is the science which studies the characteristics of human soundmaking, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their
description.’ (Hu Zhuanglin, ‘Linguistics: A Course Book’).
There are three main branches of phonetics:
1. Articulatory phonetics: this science studies how speech is produced by the
various bodily organs (like the mouth, nose, tongue and lips).
2. Acoustic phonetics: this science studies the vibrations of sound in the air and
analyses them as a sub-branch of physics. It also studies the relationship
between articulation and the resulting air waves.
3. Auditory phonetics: this science studies what happens to speech sounds once
they reach the listeners ear, and in particular how the brain is trained to
recognise and distinguish between sounds.
There are other aspects to phonetics such as experimental phonetics (the
development and testing of hypotheses in phonetics research, as William Labov
did in his New York study of the phoneme /r/), but we shall not deal with those
here.
The Organs of Speech and Sound Quality
 The vocal chords: the air stream comes up from the lungs and then meets the larynx - a
bony structure at the top of the windpipe (Adam’s apple) inside of which are two folds,
the ‘vocal chords’, they are fixed at the front, but move horizontally at the back. The
space between the opened vocal chords is called the glottis. The vocal chords can do three
things: (a) close tightly (forming a glottal stop), (b) vibrate partly opened (forming voicing
of consonants and vowels and (c) being wide apart and not vibrating (forming voiceless
consonants).
 Once air has passed out from between the vocal chords it passes the epiglottis (the
structure which prevents food going down the windpipe) and enters the pharynx. The
pharynx stretches up to the start of the nasal cavity at the very back of the mouth. It also
vibrates if necessary in time with the vocal chords. It doesn’t really move much, but the
larynx can be raised to shorten the tube from the bottom, and the velum (or ‘soft palate’)
can be raised to shorten the tube from the top.
 From the pharynx the air may leave the body from one of two exits, either via the nasal
cavity (the nose) or by the oral cavity (the mouth, or the ‘resonance chamber’). If the soft
palate (velum) is lowered, air will travel through the nose (as when one breathes). The
nose is also very stiff and not very flexible. However, if there is closure of part of the oral
cavity too, then a nasal sound will be formed (e.g. /n/ and /m/).
 By far the most useful organ of speech is the mouth, also called the ‘oral cavity’ or the
‘resonance chamber’. It is through this organ that most of the distinctions between the
articulation of different sounds are made. Let’s see what each part is, starting from the
back. (a) The uvula (the soft tip at the end of the velum) is very flexible and can be made
to vibrate (as in the French /R/). (b) After the uvula is the velum as we have said, followed
by the hard palate which is fixed and bony. The two form a dome-like structure at the top
of the cavity. (c) at the very front of the hard palate, just behind the top teeth is a
prominent ridge called the alveolar ridge. (d) Below the alveolar ridge are the top and
bottom teeth, (e) and beyond them, moving outwards are the lips, again top and bottom.
The lips can do many things: they can spread, round, open, close and vibrate; they can be
employed independently with either of the two sets of teeth, or work together. (f) Inside
the oral cavity there is also the tongue, of course. For the purposes of making and
describing sounds, we usually divide the tongue as follows: 1. The back: This can be
raised (e.g. an l-sound at the end of a word in English). 2. The front, which is divided into
(i) the blade: directly below the alveolar ridge and (ii) the tip: the very front point of the
tongue. 3. The rims, which are the edges of the tongue. The tongue, in particular, is used
to articulate many sounds, because it is so flexible: It can be raised, lowered, moved back,
forward and sideways; it can be rolled and slid and flapped and clicked among other
things! It can also restrict air and release it with varying degrees of intensity.
Putting Sounds on Paper: The Transcription Process
The sounds of English are generally transcribed (written down) according to a
standardised system. This system is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet (the IPA).
In the IPA one symbol is used to represent one sound, so there can never be any confusion
over how a sound sounds! The perfect alphabet system, if you like.
Linguists make use of TWO types of transcription, depending on how specific they
need to record actual sounds in writing on paper. The first method is general, and only gives
the minimal distinguishing unit of sound (that is, a sound which stands alone as an
identifiable unit, which if changed for another identifiable unit of sound would have the
power to alter meaning). Such a transcription is called a BROAD transcription (or phonemic
transcription) because of its generality and is identified by placing it between ‘back slashes’:
/…/. This is often the form used in dictionaries for indicating the general pronunciation of a
word.
The second method, gives more specific details about each sound unit, for example,
is it long or short? is it aspirated or not? and so on. The result is a much more accurate
picture of what is actually spoken. Because it is a detailed denotation of sounds it is called a
NARROW transcription (or phonetic transcription) and is identified by placing it between
‘square brackets’: […]. It is important to remember the difference between the back slashes
and the square brackets to avoid confusion!
The Classification of English Sounds and How to Describe Them in Words
Consonant sounds are classified according to three variables: (a) voicing, (b) place of
articulation and (c) manner of articulation.
Group A: The Plosives
Voiced bilabial plosive: /b/  [b]
Voiceless bilabial plosive: /p/  [p] and [p ]
Voiced alveolar plosive: /d/  [d]
Voiceless alveolar plosive: /t/  [t] and [t ]
Voiced uvular plosive: /g/  [g]
Voiceless uvular plosive: /k/  [k] and [k ]
Group B: The Fricatives
Voiced labiodental fricative: /v/  [v]
Voiceless labiodental fricative: /f/  [f]
Voiced dental fricative: /ð/  [ð]
Voiceless dental fricative: //  []
Voiced alveolar fricative: /z/  [z]
Voiceless alveolar fricative: /s/  [s] and [s]
Voiced postalveolar fricative: / /  [ ]
Voiceless postalveolar fricative: / /  [ ]
Voiceless glottal fricative: [ ]
Group C: The Affricates
Voiced palato-alveolar affricate: /d /  [d ]
Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate: /t /  [t ] and [t]
Group D: The Nasals
Voiced bilabial nasal: /m/  [m]
Voiced alveolar nasal: /n/  [n], [m] and [ ]
Voiced velar nasal: / /  [ ]
Group E: The Continuants
Voiced alveolar lateral: /l/  [l]
Voiced velar lateral: / /  [ ] and [ ]
Voiced alveolar approximant: /r/  [ ]
Voiced labial-velar approximant: /w/  [ ]
Voiced palatal approximant: /j/  [j]
Vowel sounds are classified by four variables, namely (a) length (long - medium - short), (b)
the position of the lips (rounded - unrounded - spread), (c) the position of the tongue (high mid - low) and (d) the place (back - central - front). (Note: Instead of ‘high’ and ‘low’ you
can say ‘closed’ and ‘open’).
Group A: Monophthongs
Long spread high front vowel: /i:/  [i:]
Short spread high front vowel: / /  [ ]
Medium unrounded mid front vowel: /e/  [e]
Short unrounded low front vowel: /æ/  [æ]
Short unrounded low central vowel: / /  [ ]
Long unrounded low back vowel: / :/  [ :]
Short unrounded low back vowel: / /  [ ]
Long rounded mid back vowel: / :/  [ :]
Short rounded high back vowel: / /  [ ]
Long rounded high back vowel: /u:/  [u:]
Long unrounded mid central vowel: / :/  [ :]
Short unrounded mid central vowel (schwa): [ ]
Group B: Diphthongs and Triphthongs
These vowel sounds are described as combinations of two (for diphthongs) or three
(for triphthongs) monophthong vowels. Usually you would say, for example, ‘a medium
unrounded mid front vowel moving to a short spread high front vowel’ which would describe
the vowel sound in the word ‘waist’.
There are eight main diphthongs in English and five main triphthongs as follows:
Diphthongs
Triphthongs
/e /
/e /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
Other Symbols
Primary stress:
Secondary stress:
Long (of a vowel): :
Aspiration:
Syllabic: .
Nasal quality (of a vowel): ~
Voiced:
Voiceless:
Lecture Five: Phonology
Phonetics and phonology are very closely related. While phonetics focuses
on what sounds are and how they are produced, travel and are understood,
phonology focuses on the system and pattern of sounds within a particular
language.
Phones, Phonemes and Allophones
1. A phone is a technical word for any human speech sound.
2. A phoneme is an abstract unit that represents an actual distinguishable
meaningful sound unit. Phonemes DO have the power to distinguish meaning.
3. An allophone is the actual realisation of a minimal sound unit, which may
vary in quality but not in kind from a minimal sound unit. Allophones do NOT
have the ability to distinguish meanings.
In sum, allophones belong to abstract phonemes. Both allophones and
phonemes are phones. (Cf. list of phonemes and allophones in the previous
lecture).
Some distinguishing features
1. If two phonemes are related in two ways, but differ in one other way, then
those two phones are said to be in phonemic contrast. For example /d/ and /t/
share the same place of articulation (on the alveolar ridge) and have the same
manner of articulation (they are both plosives). The only difference between
the two phones is that /d/ is voiced whereas /t/ is voiceless.
2. If allophones of the same phoneme occur in different, but predictable
environments, then we say that the allophones are in complementary
distribution. For example, clear [l] always comes before a vowel and dark [l]
always comes between a vowel and a consonant, as well as at the end of
words.
3. To discover what the phonemes of a language are is easy. All you have to do is
look for minimal pairs. A minimal pair is a group of two words that have
different meanings and are only distinguishable by one sound: for example,
the vowel sounds in ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’ must be a minimal pair, because if you
say the wrong one you change the meaning of the word. When you have
discovered all the contrasting pairs you have found the phonemes of that
language. Another example in English is /l/ and /r/. They distinguish pairs of
words like ‘rip’ and ‘lip’, and ‘rice’ and ‘lice’. Sometimes three or four sounds
can be found to distinguish meanings within an otherwise similar
environment. For example, the initial consonant sounds in ‘whip’, ‘lip’, ‘chip’,
‘dip’, ‘nip’. In that example /w/, /l/, /t /, /d/ and /n/ form a minimal set.
Three Primary Rules of Phonology
1. The sequential rule: The phonemes of each language are not free to come in
any order. For example, in English /nk-/ is an impossible combination at the
beginning of a word, though at the end of a word it is possible. The underlying
rules of a language that say what order sounds can and cannot come in are
called sequential rules. If /n/ begins a word then a sequential rule will tell you
that only a vowel sound may follow (as is the case in the words ‘nylon’, ‘name’,
‘nose’) and not a consonant sound.
2. The assimilation rule: When phonemes are said at natural speed in quick
succession to form words and thus meaning, they naturally lose some of their
‘pure’ quality. This is because they are influenced by the sounds around them.
As you are pronouncing one sound, your speech organs are already preparing
to articulate the next sound. This is why in the word ‘spring’ which is made up
of the phonemes /s/ /p/ /r/ / / and / / the actual pronunciation is more like [spr
]. This happens because the allophone [r] is voiced causing the vocal chords to
vibrate just in advance of articulating the sound, and so influences the
voiceless /p/ phoneme to make the voiced allophone [p]. This happens very
often in natural speech, and proves why we need to use allophones and not
abstract phonemes if we want to know the real sounds which are produced!
When sounds influence each other in this way, we say they assimilate, hence
the assimilation rule.
3. The deletion rule: This rule tells us to delete a sound even though it is
represented in writing, e.g. the ‘g’ in ‘sign’, if it is not pronounced in speech
consistently, e.g. the ‘g’ is pronounced in the related word ‘signature’.
Other Features
In English STRESS is important to take into account, because it is
frequently used to distinguish meaning. For example ‘address’ and ‘a dress’.
In some languages pitch is important in distinguishing meaning. English
does not really make use of TONES in this way, except in the use of some
monosylabic words (usually exclamations). For example, ‘ah!’ (you understand falling), ‘ah?’ (you don’t understand -rising), and ‘ah!’ (you are frustrated - high).
In English INTONATION is also an important way of conveying meaning.
There are three main tones in English: (a) the falling tone (e.g. ‘Go away!’), (b)
the rising tone (e.g. ‘What’s that?’ when asked inquisitively) and (c) the fallingrising tone (e.g. ‘This is the bike I like.’).
Lecture Six: Morphology
Morphology is the study of the structure of words. But what are words?
Ordinary people may say the groups of letters on this page separated from
another group of letters by a space at either side constitute words. But even they
don’t always know if ‘no one’ should be spelt ‘no-one’ or ‘washing machine’ as
‘washing-machine’ or not. Theologians would say that the Word is another name
for Jesus. To Eskimos words are the equivalent of whole sentences in English! So
just how does a linguist define this word ‘word’?
Technically for something to constitute being labelled a ‘word’ it must
fulfil the following conditions:
1. There is a potential pause between one word and the next. However, alone
this is unsatisfactory, because ‘gerrit’ (from the Yorkshire dialect) could be
described as a ‘word’ because there is no pause between ‘g’ and ‘t’, yet that
string of letters is in fact two words: ‘get’ + ‘it’). Clearly more conditions need
to be met.
2. A word must be indivisible. For example, when you say ‘market’ there may be
a slight pause between the two syllables ‘mar’ and ‘ket’, but the problem is
‘mar’ is another word meaning to ‘damage’ or ‘spoil’ and ‘ket’ has no meaning
alone.
3. Therefore, another condition must be that a word must be the smallest unit of
speech which, when standing alone, carries an entire meaning. It was
Bloomfield (an American linguist) who first coined the term ‘minimal free
form’. Unfortunately, not all ‘words’ do this in natural speech as, for example,
‘the’.
Open and Closed Classes of Words
In English all parts of speech fall into one of two classes: open or closed.
The open class includes nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They are open,
because new lexemes can be added to them very easily at any time. For example,
recent additions to this class include ‘GM-foods’, ‘collateral damage’, ‘smart
bomb’, ‘DVD’, ‘to be pants’, ‘tulips’, ‘to joyride’ and ‘Euro’. The closed class
includes conjunctions and pronouns which do not usually change or expand. Up
until about the start of the 17th century English had two second person
pronouns, namely ‘thou’ and ‘you’. In modern English only ‘you’ remains. Some
feminists have suggested replacing he and she with a neutral word like ‘e’ and
‘thon’, but neither word has caught on. In any case, in informal English almost
everyone uses ‘they’ to mean he or she!
Morphs, Morphemes and Allomorphs
Just as we have the terms ‘phone’, ‘phoneme’ and ‘allophone’ in
phonology, in morphology we have the terms morph, morpheme and allomorph.
A morph or morpheme (both mean the same) are minimal units of meaning.
Words may be comprised of one or more morphemes. For example, ‘sausage’ (1
morpheme) ‘countable’ (2 morphemes: count + able), ‘incomprehensible’ (4
morphemes: in + com + prehens + ible) and so on. An allomorph is a variant of
a morpheme. For example the morpheme /in-/ (a prefix meaning ‘not’) may
appear as /ir-/ (before another /r/ sound, as in ‘irresponsible’), as /im-/ (before a
/p/ sound, as in ‘impossible), as /il-/ (before an /l/ sound, as in ‘illiterate’) and as
/in-/ (before most other sounds, as in ‘indispensable’).
Notice that morphs are put between back slashes /…/ and root
morphemes in curly brackets {…}.
Bound or Free?
Morphemes are usually divided into two categories. The choice of category
(bound or free) depends on the morpheme itself.
If a morpheme can stand alone as a minimal meaningful unit and
function as a word on its own then it is a free morpheme. If a morpheme stands
alone as a minimal meaningful unit but MUST be combined with another
morpheme to function as a word, then it is a bound morpheme. Look at the
examples below.
BOUND MORPHEMES
/-ary/
/-ology/
/con-/
/-able/
/-ish/
/-ile/
/-ise/
/anti-/
/-er/
/-ist/
/-ant/
/be-/ (NB this is not the same morpheme as ‘be’)
/-ette/
/ob-/
FREE MORPHEMES
/cat/
/meal/
/dog/
/music/
/sleep/
/bad/
/cool/
/charm/
/lake/
/you/
/deep/
/green/
/yoke/
/man/
Derivational and Inflectional Affixation
Some morphemes have specific grammatical and semantic functions
within a given language. In the case of English a morpheme may be more than
just bound or free, it may also be classed as ‘derivational’ or ‘inflectional’. Let’s
look at each one in turn.
1. A derivational morpheme is a morpheme whose function it is to change a
lexical item from one word class into another, say from verb to noun, or noun
to adjective. There are surprisingly many such morphemes. The linguist
Tournier discovered 386 derivational prefixes and 322 derivational suffixes in
English! Here is an example beginning with the root or stem ‘grace’.
gracefully (Adj. - Adv.)
gracefulness (Adj. - N.)
ungraceful (Adj. - Adj.)
graceful
ungracefully (Adj. - Adv.)
ungracefulness (Adj. - N.)
(N. - Adj.)
(to) grace (N. - V.)
disgracefully (Adj. - Adv.)
(to) disgrace (N. - V.)
disgraceful (N. - Adj.)
disgracefulness (Adj. - N.)
graceless (N. - Adj.)
gracelessly (Adj. - Adv.)
gracelessness (Adj. - N.)
disgrace
(N. - N.)
GRACE
(N. - Adj.)
gracious
graciously (Adj. - Adv.)
graciousness (Adj. - N.)
ungracious (Adj. - Adj.)
ungraciously (Adj. - Adv.)
ungraciousness (Adj. - N.)
2. An inflectional morpheme is a bound morpheme that adds grammatical
information to another morpheme and keeps within the same syntactic
category. In English, for example, this includes morphemes for plurals,
genders, present and past participles, third person singular of verbs, and so
on.
Additionally, we need to briefly explain ‘root’ or ‘stem’? - A root or stem is
a free-standing morph to which other morphs may be affixed to form a
polymorphemic word. A root is the core (or central focus of meaning) of such a
word. There is also a morph called a portmanteau morph which comes from the
French word for suitcase, i.e. ‘able to hold a lot of things’. The idea here is that
some bound morphs in particular not only carry information about the tense of a
verb for example, but also the person (e.g. /hæz/ is at once a root morpheme, a
present tense marker and an indicator of the third person singular).
Morphological Rules of Word Formation
New words do not tend to be just formed out of the blue. Often old words
are given new uses in different classes by the process of affixation. Some affix
morphs are quite productive in forming new words, others are less so. Some
common prefixes and suffixes include /dis-/, /in-/, /de-/ and /ex-/, and /-tion/, /-ish/
and /-able/.
Compounding is yet another way of creating new words and happens very
frequently in English. Here are some common observations:
1. Two words combining from the same category will stay in that category. For
example, hair (N.) + dryer (N.) = hairdryer (N.), and crow (N.) + bar (N.) =
crowbar (N.).
2. Two words combining from different categories will form a new word of the
same category as the final word in the compound. For example, gentle (Adj.) +
man (N.) = gentleman (N.), and fire (N.) + proof (Adj.) = fireproof (Adj.).
3. Often compounds have a different stress from the non-compounded sequence.
For example, lookout and look out!
4. Compounds often have different meanings from their constituent parts. For
example, a ‘frogman’ is not a creature which is half frog and half man! It is a
diver who helps police, detectives or researchers look for clues under water.
To conclude, morphology helps us to understand the processes behind
word formation and how meaningless sounds may combine to become
meaningful units that we use to build the lexicon of our language. It sometimes
helps us to break down complex words to find out their meaning, or at least their
source. For learners of English, morphology can help to organise vocabulary into
easily recognisable groups, aid memorisation and lower the time it takes to learn
new words. If you know roots of words and have studied the morphology of
affixation, you can immediately know at least twenty or more words without
having to learn them all separately.
Appendix A: Common Prefixes With Their Meanings
PREFIXES
a (an)
ab (abs)
ac (ad, af, ag, al, an, ap, at)
anti
co (cog, col, com, con, cor)
de
e (ec, ef, ex)
eph (epi)
eu
extra
inter
mis
per
re (red)
MEANINGS
not/without
from/away from
to/towards/thoroughly
against/opposed to
with/together
off/away/freeing from/completely
out of/off/from/without/thoroughly
over/upon
good/well/advantageous
beyond/outside
between/among
wrong/ill/bad/incorrectly
through/by/thoroughly
back/again
Appendix B: Common Suffixes With Their Meanings
SUFFIXES
able (ible/ble)
acy
al (ial)
ance (ancy, ence, ency)
ate
ee
ery (ry)
esque
fic
ful
ine
ious (ous, uous)
ise
ory
MEANINGS
worthy of being/fit to be/capable of being
state or quality of being
belonging to/characteristic of/act of
state/act/quality/process/condition of being
act/having the function or office of/making
one to whom an act is done or a right is granted
character/behaviour/art/trade/occupation
in the manner or style of
causing
abounding in/full of
pertaining to/like/of the nature of
abounding in/possessing the qualities of
render/make into/subject to/make like
serving for/pertaining to
(Both appendices are based on information in ‘Games to Improve Your Child’s
English’, by A. B. Hurwitz and A. Goddard)
Linguistics (Lecture six): Morphology Worksheet
Please try to answer each of the following questions.
1. Identify the morphemes of each of the following words and state whether they
are ‘bound’ or ‘free’ morphemes in each case.
(a) antidisestablishmentarianism
(b) compact disk
(c) elevator
(d) television
2. What are the roots in each of the following words. Say why in each case.
(a) telegraph
(b) musician
(c) internet
(d) cabbage
3. List all the derivational and inflectional allomorphs of the verb “be”. (NB
Marks will be awarded here for effort as much as for getting the ‘right’
answer).
Linguistics (Lecture six): Morphology Worksheet
Please try to answer each of the following questions.
1. Identify the morphemes of each of the following words and state whether they
are ‘bound’ or ‘free’ morphemes in each case.
(a) antidisestablishmentarianism
(b) compact disk
(c) elevator
(d) television
2. What are the roots in each of the following words. Say why in each case.
(a) telegraph
(b) musician
(c) internet
(d) cabbage
3. List all the derivational and inflectional allomorphs of the verb “be”. (NB
Marks will be awarded here for effort as much as for getting the ‘right’
answer).
Linguistics (Lecture six): Morphology Worksheet
ANSWERS
Please try to answer each of the following questions.
1. Identify the morphemes of each of the following words and state whether they
are ‘bound’ or ‘free’ morphemes in each case.
(a) antidisestablishmentarianism:
1. /anti / (bound)
2. /dis/ (bound)
3. /establish/ (free)
4. /ment/ (bound)
5. /arian/ (bound)
6. /ism/ (bound)
(b) compact disk:
1. /com/ (bound)
2. /pact/ (bound)
3. /disk/ (free)
(c) elevator:
1. /eleva/ (bound)
2. /tor/ (bound)
(d) television:
1. /tele/ (bound)
2. /vision/ (free)
2. What are the roots in each of the following words. Say why in each case.
(a) telegraph: /graph/
(b) musician: /music/
all of them are minimal free forms
(c) internet: /net/
which carry the meaning of the word.
(d) cabbage: /cabbage/
3. List all the derivational and inflectional allomorphs of the verb “be”. (NB
Marks will be awarded here for effort as much as for getting the ‘right’
answer).
See attached sheet.
{“Be”}
/æm/
/a:/
/ z/
/a:/
/a:/
/a:/
/w +
/w +
/w +
/w +
/w +
/w +
z/
:/
z/
:/
:/
:/
/ +
/w +
/w +
/ +
/w +
/w +
/ +
/w +
/w +
/ +
/w +
/w +
/w +
/ +
/ +
/w +
/ +
/ +
d/
d/
d/
d/
d/
d/
/bi: + Ø/
/bi: + Ø/
/bi: + /
/bi: + n/
/ + a:/
/w + /
d/
d/
d/
d/
d/
d/
l/
l/
l/
l/
l/
l/
/w + l/
/ + l/
/ + l/
/w + l/
/ + l/
/ + l/
/w +
/w +
/w +
/w +
/w +
/w +
:/
:/
:/
:/
:/
:/
Root Morpheme {“be”}
Allomorphs
1. /bi:/ occurs only in the infinitive, participles, and the imperative forms.
2. /æm/ occurs only in 1st person singular of the present tense. It is a
portmanteau morph.
3. /a:/ occurs in the 2nd person singular and all plural forms of the present tense.
It is a portmanteau morph.
4. / z/ occurs in the 3rd person singular of the present tense. It is a portmanteau
morph.
5. / / occurs in the 1st person of future I and in the 2nd and 3rd persons of future
II.
6. Else /w/.
Suffixes
Person
Morpheme
{1st person/sing.}
{2nd person/sing.}
{3rd person/sing.}
{1st person/pl.}
{2nd person pl.}
{3rd person/pl.}
Allomorphs
/æm/ or Ø
Ø
/ z/ or / z/ or Ø
Ø
Ø
Ø
Tense/Mood
Morpheme
{present}
{past}
{future}
{conditional}
{subjunctive}
{infinitive}
{imperative}
{pr. Participle}
{pt. Participle}
Allomorphs
/æm/ or / z/ or /a:/
/ z/ or / :/
/a:/ or / / or / l/ or / l/
/ d/
/ :/
Ø
Ø
/ /
/n/
Lecture Seven: Syntax Part I
What is Syntax?
Essentially syntax studies the way in which words may be grouped
together into meaningful sentences, and a sentence is an independent structural
form, in much the same way as a morpheme is an independent minimal unit of
meaning and a phoneme is a smallest distinguishable unit of sound.
Bloomfield and Structuralism
Bloomfield is a well known and highly acclaimed American linguist, and
he founded a school of thought that we call ‘structuralism’ or ‘structural
linguistics’. He was not interested in the meaning of language items, but more in
objective grammatical and phonological details that could be analysed more
readily. He went on to establish some fixed methods by which language could be
analysed, and he called them ‘discovering procedures’. He hoped to arrive at an
adequate description of English from those methods. Here is what another
linguist, Bernard Bloch, said in an obituary of him in 1949:
“There can be no doubt that Bloomfield’s greatest contribution to the study of
language was to make a science of it……It was Bloomfield who taught us the
necessity of speaking about language in the style that every scientist uses when
he speaks about the object of his research: impersonally, precisely, and in terms
that assume no more than actual observation discloses to him.”
His theory of syntax has two basic core ideas: The notions of Form
Classes, on the one hand, and Constituent Structure, on the other.
Form Classes
A form class is, if you like, a group of language items that have a similar
grammatical function and share certain phonological qualities, so that if one
language item was exchanged for another within the same class there would be
no subsequent change to the syntax (or ‘structure’) of a sentence. For example,
the form class of ‘imperatives’ all have the same intonation (namely a falling
tone) and all of them are base forms of verbs: e.g. Stand! Go! Eat!. Another
example involves the grammatical function of a word in a sentence; words of the
same form class have the same grammatical function: In the sentence ‘Jenny
goes shopping’, ‘Jenny’ is the subject of the action of ‘going shopping’. In the
sentence ‘John likes tea’, ‘John’ is the subject of the action ‘likes tea’. If ‘John’
and ‘Jenny’ are swapped round, one still has two perfectly grammatical
sentences. ‘Likes’ and ‘goes’ are not in the same class, because if they switch
places a grammatically incorrect and meaningless sentence is formed: *‘John
goes tea’.
In theory, if enough data were collected and all the form classes
discovered, then the complete structure of a language would be found.
Constituent Structure
Bloomfield’s other theory involves ‘constituent structure’. This theory is
founded on the belief that sentences are not linear in organisation, e.g. ‘The dog
is very dangerous in my opinion’, but that there must be some hierarchical
structure. This can be shown in this way: ‘The dog is very dangerous in my
opinion’ makes perfect sense, as does ‘In my opinion the dog is very dangerous’,
but *‘Dangerous in my opinion dog the very is’ makes no sense at all. Clearly
there must be a way of representing the structure of a sentence in such a way
that allows for the first two examples above, but not the final one. The theory of
‘hierarchies of constructions’ was made to account for this.
Immediate Constituent Analysis
Immediate constituent analysis, or simply IC analysis, is an attempt at
displaying sentence structure in a hierarchical way. The approach works
through all the different levels of structure within a given sentence by means of
a series of stages. At each stage a construction is divided into its major
constituents and so the process goes on until no further divisions can be made.
Let’s take the example ‘The girl chased the dog’ (D. Crystal, 1995):
The girl
The girl
(= The girl
The +
girl
+
+
+
+
chased the dog
chased
+
chase + -ed +
chase + -ed +
the
the dog
the dog)
+
dog
The dividing (‘cutting’) stages can be shown with lines representing the
stages of cutting:
The /// girl / chase /// -ed // the /// dog
However, such a representation is very confusing, especially with long sentences.
So a preferred, but less compact, method uses ‘tree diagrams’:
The
girl
chased
the
dog
In the above representation the stages where each part of the sentence is
sub-divided are known as ‘immediate constituents’, i.e. they are the results (=
constituents) at a specific (= immediate) moment. The final result is called the
‘ultimate constituent’, because it cannot be broken down any more. When two
lines join two constituents together then the constituents are said to be in a
‘construction’ together.
Endocentric and Exocentric constructions
a) Most phrases can be seen as expansions of a central element (the head) and
these are often referred to as ‘endocentric’ phrases. For example,
car
the car
the big cars
all the big cars
all the big cars in the garage
A co-ordinate clause is like this one: ‘the boy left on Monday and the girl left
on Tuesday’ in which both sides of the sentence are from the same form class. A
subordinate clause looks like this: ‘the boy left on Monday when Tom rang’ in
which ‘when Tom rang’ modifies the head. Noun phrases, verb phrases and
Adjective phrases are usually endocentric.
b) The opposite are Exocentric constructions in which none of the constituents
are in the same class as the construction. For example, ‘inside / the cars’ is in
an exocentric construction because ‘inside’ and ‘the cars’ belong to two
different form classes. This is just the same with phrases like ‘over the hill’,
‘under the bridge’ and ‘round the bend’ where the underlined elements are
equivalent to ‘inside’ in the last sentence. Exocentric constructions are usually
prepositional phrases, predicate constructions (V + O) and connective
constructions (be + complement).
Unlabelled vs. Labelled Representation
The IC analysis is good at breaking down sentences for us, but it does not
tell us what the form classes are for each constituent, so we say it is ‘unlabelled’.
To find out the form classes a LABELLED tree diagram is needed. Labelled tree
diagrams use symbols after each part of the tree is cut to show what the
constituent-structure is like. Only the ultimate constituent is written out fully.
For example, our sentence ‘The girl chased the dog’ would look like this after a
labelled analysis:
S
NP
VP
DET N
V
O
DET N
The
girl
chased
the
dog
It is possible for the diagram above to be made more complex by breaking
down ‘determiner’ again into article, and by breaking down the verb into ‘base
form’ plus ‘past tense marker’, but it is not absolutely necessary.
Here is a list of some common abbreviations to use in drawing a labelled
diagram:
S = Sentence (e.g. I went out to quickly buy some red roses at the florists)
PredP = Predicate phrase (e.g. to quickly buy some red roses at the florists)
NP = Noun Phrase (e.g. I went out)
AdvP = Adverb Phrase (e.g. to quickly buy)
VP = Verb Phrase (e.g. buy)
PP = Prepositional phrase (e.g. at the florists)
O = Object (e.g. some red roses)
AP = Adjective Phrase (e.g. red roses)
A = Adjective (e.g. red)
V = Verb (e.g. went [go + past tense] out)
Aux = Auxiliary Verb (i.e. be, have, do, etc.)
Adv = Adverb (e.g. quickly)
N = Noun (e.g. roses [rose + plural marker])
DET = Determiner (e.g. some)
Prep = Preposition (e.g. at)
Deg. = Degree Word (i.e. very, quite, rather, etc.)
Discontinuous Constituents
Unfortunately, languages are not always so straight forward. English is a perfect
example. If the principle of IC analysis is that syntactically dependent components should
remain together, then a big problem arises for many English phrasal verbs such as ‘to
pick sth. up’, ‘to take sth. back’ and ‘to bring sth. up’. Such phrases are called
‘discontinuous constituents’ because constituents don’t follow on one after the other. They
do not fit easily into an IC diagram.