Welcome to Linguistics (Ling1005)

1
Welcome to Linguistics (Ling1005)

• Morphology, phonetics and phonology

2
Course organization

• Two lectures and a tutorial each week.
• Ling 1005 Mon Tues morning
• Ling 6105 Mon evening 4-6
• Tutorial sign up through SI-NET

3
Things to know about

• Course co-ordinator John Ingram
• Your tutor
• The lectures
• The weekly assignments worksheets
• Class handouts and textbook Fromkin et al.
• Course web site
• Feedback

4
Assessment

• Weekly worksheet distributed in lecture, for
  tutorials in following week. 15
• Phonetic transcription test 10
• Mid-semester test 30
• Final-exam 45

5
What is Linguistics?

• Linguistics the scientific study of human
  languages and natural language in general.
• Language a shared code, tacitly known by all
  speakers of a language.

6
What do linguists study?

• How languages may vary one from another.
• What all languages have in common so called
  language universals.
• How languages are acquired. (part of
  psycho-linguistics)
• The neural basis of human language capacities
  (neuro-linguistics).
• How languages change over time (historical
  linguistics) and space (regional dialectology).
• How languages vary in social space
  (sociolinguistics).

7
A language is a complex structure

• Phonetics Phonology study of speech sounds and
  the sound systems of languages.
• Morphology the composition and structure of
  words (morph- means form. -ology ?)
• Syntax how words are combined to form sentences.
• Semantics what sorts of meanings are conveyed by
  linguistic entities (words, phrases) and how.

8
Studying linguistics at UQ

• LING1000/6100 Syntax and semantics
• LING1005/6105 Morphology (structure of words)
  and the sound system of language (Phonology,
  Phonetics)
• Two courses to provide an introduction to the
  core areas of linguistics.

9
What is a word?

• Everyone knows this, yet difficult to define.
• A word is a particular combination of sounds and
  meaning.
• We can identify words by the strings of sounds
  that comprise them.
• We can also tell what is a possible word in our
  native language.

10
Possible word forms in English?

• blark
• snorf
• dreklet
• grof
• mjuon
• telbo

• ptong
• knast
• pshtros
• ngambo
• limpz
• lbakr

11
Possible word forms in English?

• blark possible
• snorf
• dreklet
• grof
• mjuon
• telbo

• ptong not possible
• knast
• pshtros
• ngambo
• limpz
• lbakr

12
Possible word forms in English?

• blark possible
• snorf possible
• dreklet possible
• grof possible
• mjuon actual
• telbo possible

• ptong not possible
• knast not possible
• pshtros not possible
• ngambo not possible
• limpz not possible
• lbakr not possible

Each of the letters in the words above are
assumed to represent a sound that is actually
pronounced unlike the silent p in psychology.
13
Listeners tacitly know

• The sound sequences that make for possible
  words in their language.
• These phonotactic constraints are part of the
  phonology of the language. More on this later.
• Not all native speakers will have the word
  mjuon, spelled muon (a subatomic particle) in
  their vocabulary (mental dictionary).
• But they will recognize from the pronunciation
  that it is a possible word of English.

14
What lies behind our ability to distinguish
possible from not-possible words?

• Its not just relative ease of pronunciation
• Most of the non-possible words pshtrosknast
  are easily pronounced,
• and involve sound sequences commonly found in
  other languages.
• They may be actual words in other languages.
• e.g. pshtros means ostrich in some Slavic
  languages
• Answer tacit knowledge of the phonotactic
  constraints of the language. More on this later

15
Loanwords

• Another way of illustrating how sound sequencing
  constraints define possible words in a
  language.
• As a result of cultural contact, one language may
  borrow words from another.
• The newly borrowed words are transformed to meet
  the phonological constraints of the borrowing
  language.

16
Njungumarda English loanwords

• wiki
• waja
• taraka
• tjapan

17
Njungumarda English loanwords

• wiki week
• waja wire
• taraka truck
• tjapan seven

• Nj. Words must have at least two syllables.
• Nj. Simple CV syllables are preferred.
• Nj. Does not allow consonant clusters CCV
• Nj. Has no fricative sounds s or v. These
  sounds are replaced by the nearest available
  stop consonants.

18
Words have phonological structure

• Consisting of sound sequences (and other
  components, as we shall see).
• The sound units are known as phonemes.
• Every language has its own distinctive inventory
  of phonemes the sounds of English, Njangumarda.
• Every language has its set of sound sequencing
  constraints (phonotactics)
• Sound structure (phonology) extends beyond the
  word to the sound structure of phrases.
• It also extends below the level of the phoneme.
  Phonemes are made up of smaller contrastive sound
  properties, as we shall see.

19
Phonological structure of the word segment
20
Words also have morphological structure

• The phonological structure of a word tells us how
  to pronounce it and how to recognize or
  distinguish it from other words.
• The morphological structure of a word is a guide
  to its meaning and its role in sentence structure.

21
Consider the word decipherability

• Do you recognize this word?
• What does it mean?
• The property of being capable of being
  deciphered.
• Would you expect to find this word in an
  dictionary?
• Probably not. So how do you know it?
• From our (tacit) knowledge of the rules of
  English word formation.

22
Morphological structure ofdeciphernounverb
ableadj.itynoun

• The bits in brackets are known as morphemes
  de-, cipher, -able,etc.
• A morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning.
• A morpheme is not necessarily a word.
• A word is a free form, capable of standing
  alone.
• How many words can you find in decipherability?
• Answer At least 4
• cipher, decipher, decipherable, decipherability

23
Morphological structure ofdeciphernounverb
ableadj.itynoun

• The morphological structure of a word contains a
  good deal of tacit grammatical knowledge about
  how the word may be used.
• We know that decipher is a verb
• He tried to decipher the code.
• The spy stole the decipher
• Because decipher is a verb of a certain type, we
  can add the suffix able and make it an
  adjective.
• -ity can be suffixed to an adjective to form a
  noun.
• sensitive -ity gt sensitivity eligible -ity
• But not to just any adjective
• sad -ity, good -ity, wise -ity

24
Word building

• ciphernoun
• de ciphernounverb
• Affix stemword
• decipherverb ableadj.
• stem affixword

25
Contracted forms

• Count the words in
• He will decipher the will.
• Easy! Five.
• How about ?
• Hell decipher the will.
• Four. ll is a kind of affix. It cant stand
  alone.
• Will he deciper the will?
• ll he decipher the will?
• Some words have contracted forms, which require
  another word to lean on. They are known as
  clitics.

26
Grammatical knowledge

• We have tacit knowledge of which words can
  cliticize (become clitics)
• Function words as distinct from major lexical
  items verbs, nouns, adjectives.
• Also, Consider
• He will do it.
• Hell do it.
• Yes he will.
• Yes hell.
• Having a word to lean on is not enough. What
  other condition is required for will to
  cliticize to ll ?
• Another verb must follow.

27
Summarizing

• What do we tacitly know about a word?
• Its phonological structure
• Sounds (phonemes)
• Sound sequencing constraints (phonotactics)
• Its morphological structure
• Morphemes
• Word building rules (morphology)
• Its grammatical usage
• Linguistics seeks to make this tacit knowledge
  explicit.