Linguistic Principles and Second Language Acquisition

16 October 2013

Quiz 1

Agenda
Business Recap on morphology Syntax

Business
Midterm Assessment on Blackboard Assignments 2, 3, and 4

Morphology Recap
Definition of word is not simple. Morphology is study of forms of words
How and why the systematic changes happen

Open and closed class morphemes Derivational morphology

Changes meaning and/or grammatical class

Inflectional morphology
Does not change meaning; shifts grammatical function

Morphology Recap
Only 8 inflectional morphemes in English
Possessive - Sarahs Plural cats Third person singular he likes Present participle dancing Past tense danced Past participle has taken Comparative happier Superlative - happiest

Morphology Recap
Phonology can condition what allomorphs are used. Irregular morphology
Past tense Plurals

Fine line between morphology and syntax

Back to the Eskimos and their snow

Swahili
nina- mpig- i - a Subject1s-pres- ObjectA3s - hit appl- IND I hit him (for someone) Words can consist of more than single morphemes.
Some languages include more sentence structure information in morphology.

Syntax
We can produce and understand new sentences never before heard or written:
Some big possums are starting to dance in the circus tent.

We can produce and understand very long sentences:

Bill said that he thought that the angry vice president wanted to tell the new legislator that the law that he thought was going to pass

We can differentiate meaning based on grammatical roles in sentences.

Sarah hired Jim vs. Jim hired Sarah.

Syntax
Meaning is not the same thing as syntactic well-formedness
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. *Furiously sleep green ideas colorless.

How sentences are structured and ordered in languages Close relation to Morphology

How can we tell what pieces work together

Remember morphology trees?
Unlockable Reconstruction

How do we know what pieces of sentences go together and how pieces work within sentences? Structural analysis

Structural Analysis
Test frames
The _________ makes a lot of noise. I heard a _____________ yesterday.
________ makes a lot of noise. I heard _______ yesterday

Constituent Analysis
How do groups of words fit together. The small cat ran through the house quickly.
The small cat ran through the house quickly

Can determine constituent-hood using a variety of tests The component of a constituent that determines the properties of that constituent is called the head and the constituent is called a phrase.

Constituent Analysis
Question/Answer pairs Q: Many executives eat where? A: At really fancy restaurants Q: Many executives do what? A: Eat at really fancy restaurants. Not true of non-constituents
No question where the answer is *Executives eat at.

Constituent Analysis
Substitution Noun Phrases
The little boy fed the cat.
He fed her.

The little boy from next door fed the cat without a tail.
*He from next door fed her without a tail.

The little boy from next door fed the cat without a tail.
He fed her.

Pronouns can replace noun phrases (NP)

Constituent Analysis
Substitution Other pro-forms
Put it on the table.
Put it there.

Put it over on the table.

Put it over there.

Put it over on the table.

Put it there.

Constituent Analysis
Depends on the syntactic context
Put it on the table thats by the door.
*Put it there thats by the door.

Put it over on the table thats by the door.

*Put it over there thats by the door.

Put it over on the table thats by the door.

*Put it there thats by the door.

Constituent Analysis
Adjective phrases
I am very happy,
and Linda is so, too.

I am very fond of Lukas,

and Linda is so, too.

I am very fond of my nephew

*and Linda is so of her niece.

Constituent Analysis
Verb phrase replacement Who eats at really fancy restaurants? Many executives do.

Labeled Brackets
On the board

How do we put constituents together?

Syntax All and only
Account for all grammatical sentences, but dont mistakenly also account for ungrammatical sentences.

Prepositions go before nouns?

Prepositions go before noun phrases.

We want to generate sentences with our grammatical rules

Quick history of generative grammar

1950s Noam Chomsky Determine the set of grammatical rules that define the possible sentences in a language
DESCRIPTIVE grammar rules.

Number of specific theories over the past 60 years Hugely influential in linguistics in general Rise of different (non-generative) theories in recent years.

Generative grammar
Finite set of rules
Can generate infinite sentences

Can capture similarities between sentences Can describe differences among sentences

Deep and Surface Structure

Surface structure
How the sentence is spoken/written in reality.

Deep structure
Underlying structure Captures similarities among sentences with different surface structures.
The boy hit the ball. The ball was hit by the boy. It was the ball that the boy hit. Was the ball hit by the boy?

Back to labeled brackets and constituents

Some patterns emerge over time. Noun phrases Prepositional phrases Verb phrases

Phrase Structure Rules

Rules that determine what components make up each type of phrase, and in what order those components must appear.

Lexical Rules
Can make a mini-language by stating what words can be used as each part of speech: PN -> {Mary, John} N -> {cat, dog} A -> {a, the} V -> {like, hit} Etc.

Phrase Structure Rules

Verb Phrases For example: Verb phrases always have a verb, and sometimes have a noun phrase or prepositional phrase.

Phrase Structure Rules

S NP VP NP {Det N, PN, Pro} VP {V (NP) (PP) (Adv)} PP {P NP}

Trees
Can translate these phrase structure rules into trees

Trees

The boy (NP) Det The N boy

the boy in the yard NP Det N P Det The boy in the PP NP N yard

Trees

took the money (VP) V Det NP N

took the money from the bank VP V Det NP N P Det took the money from the PP NP N bank
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took

the

money

Practice Trees
Try drawing practice trees for these phrases
big cat in the big hallway recorded the conversation

Trees
The old tree swayed in the wind
S
NP VP

Det

Adj

V
P

PP
NP

Det
The old tree swayed in the

N
wind

Trees
The children put the toy in the box
S
NP VP

Det

V
Det

NP
N P

PP
NP

Det
The children put the toy in the

N
box
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Trees
The small boy saw George with a crazy dog recently.

Practice Trees
Draw practice trees for these sentences.
The door slammed loudly. The sun shone. The young boy kissed the girl. The cat ran around the tree. The boat on the sea capsized in the storm. The tree fell in the forest.

Recursion
Some rules can be applied more than once. Preposition phrases can be nested inside prepositional phrases.
The book was on the table under the window in the big house.

Can embed sentences within sentences

Recursion
John liked Mary. Sarah knew that John liked Mary. Peter thought that Sarah knew that John liked Mary. Etc. that starts a new type of phrase
Complement phrase

Recursion

Complement Phrase
Sarah knew that John liked Mary. that is a complement (C) that heads a Complement Phrase (CP) Where does the CP go? What does the CP consist of. S NP VP VP V CP CP C S

Ambiguity
Some sentences are ambiguous The boy saw the man with the telescope.

Ambiguity
S
NP VP

Det

V
Det

NP
N P

PP
NP

Det
The boy saw the

man with the telescope

Ambiguity
S NP Det N V Det N P Det The boy saw the VP NP PP NP N

man with the telescope

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Ambiguity with Phrases

Miniature badgers and raccoons
Miniature badgers and raccoons Miniature badgers and raccoons

More intelligent leaders

More intelligent leaders More intelligent leaders

Ambiguity within words

unlockable

Movement Rules
We want to be able to capture how sentences are related to each other. Mary can drive. Can Mary drive? We can capture this by proposing transformational rules.

Movement Rules
Avoids proposing phrase structure rules that generate ungrammatical strings. E.g., VP (Adv) V (NP) (PP) (Adv)
*The father cleverly wept bitterly.

If there is no transformation deep structure = surface structure. If transformations apply deep structure surface structure.

Movement Rules
Can move in steps 1. The father is weeping silently. 2. The father is silently weeping. 3. Is the father silently weeping?

Movement rules
Movement rules can get to be extremely complicated Vary from language to language. Can account for active passive transformations Yes/no question formation Wh- question formation Topicalization

Quick Foray into Semantics

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Semantics
The man bit the dog. The dog bit the man. Dictionaries exist for word meaning.
Something we discuss and fight about.

Not typically the case for sentence meaning.

Linguistic meaning is typically understood when encountering a new sentence Pragmatic meaning may not be

Conceptual vs. Associative Meeting

Conceptual meaning
Basic components of word meaning.
Dictionary definition needle - (From the OED) a very fine slender piece of metal with a point at one end and a hole or eye for thread at the other, used in sewing.

Associative meaning
Other associations or connotations
Knitting, pain, doctors office

Linguistics cares more about conceptual meaning (usually)

Why are these sentences bad

The table watched television. The hamburger recorded a podcast. The cat is reading the novel. Mi tarjeta no trabaja. All syntactically okay But semantic features mismatch

Semantic features
We use a + or sign to denote whether the word has that semantic feature or not. The biggest ones in English are +/- animate and +/- human. Others exist as well.
Some differ across languages.

Semantic Roles
Agent
Entity performing action

Theme/patient
Involved in or affected by action; entity being described

Instrument
Thing used to perform the action

Experiencer
Feeling perception or state of being

Semantic roles
Location
Where something is

Source
Where something is coming from

Goal
Where something is going

Causative
Force that causes a change

Possessor
Person/thing who has something

Semantic roles
In English, not marked
Except for s for possessors

Other languages mark these

Russian, German This hotel forbids dogs. In diesem Hotel sind Hunde verboten. *Dieses Hotel verbietet Hunded

Location doesnt get to be used in subject position in German.

Recap
Study of sentence structure Generative grammar
Goal to account for all and only possible sentences.

Generate finite number of rules to result in infinite number of sentences.

Recap
Pieces of sentences that go together are constituents. Can account for relationship between words in sentences via labeled bracket analysis or trees. Infinite numbers of sentences are possible in all languages via recursion. Structural ambiguity can be described via trees.

Recap
Differences between deep and surface structure.
Result of movement rules.

Semantic roles
Determine whether a sentence is semantically plausible
Even if grammatically correct.

For Monday
Read Yule Chapter 17 Look ahead to next Wednesday 2 chapters of Yule and 1 of Lightbown and Spada. Enjoy your weekend!