Ling 201/ Section E Lecture Notes Introduction 1. Defining properties of human languages Human language is a discrete combinatorial system: Speakers have at their disposal an inventory of building blocks which they can combine to form bigger units (like in the LEGO game). For example, sentences are formed by combining words: 1) The cat is on the mat. Words are formed by combing sounds: 2) the sounds [t], [k], [a] can be combined to form the word [kat] (i.e. cat)1 Being a discrete combinatorial system is a characteristic of human languages. A parrot trained to say I want a cracker and Don t go in there! will never recombine the words of the sentences he learnt to say I don t want a cracker or recombine the sounds involved to say Scram Rat! Human language is a productive system: speakers can produce and understand any number of messages that have never been expressed before because they can systematically combine discrete units (words, morphemes, sounds,) to create new expressions. 3) 4) Pink elephants were dancing on TV when the astronaut called home to say that he got safely to Mars. Possible but non-existent word: klisp However not all combinations are possible! 5) 6) 7) The cat is sitting on my lap. *Cat the sitting is on my lap. *lkisp (milk) The asterisk = ungrammatical 1 To distinguish sounds from letters of the alphabet, we will put square brackets [] around them. This is an important distinction, since letters of the alphabet can correspond to different sounds. The English letter c , for example, corresponds to the sound [k] in the word cat and [s] in the word cymbal . 2. Grammaticality The goal of theoretical linguistics is to construct a theory of languages that predicts which combinations are grammatical and which combinations are not grammatical. Grammaticality is, thus, a key concept for us. You, as <a href="/keyword/native-speakers/" >native speakers</a> of English, KNOW that these combinations are not good, as well as you knew there were differences in meanings between want to and wanna. (This type of linguistic knowledge in the speaker s mind is called a grammar). In order to know if a sentence is grammatical in a given language, we need to rely on the intuitions of the <a href="/keyword/native-speakers/" >native speakers</a> of the language. If <a href="/keyword/native-speakers/" >native speakers</a> would say (5), for example, then (5) is grammatical. However, sometimes it can be hard to separate native speaker s intuitions from competing forces: a) Prescriptive pressure Examples of prescriptive rules: 8) 9) Never end a sentence with a preposition. Never split an infinitive. NO: ...to boldly go where no one has gone before YES: ...to go boldly where no one has gone before There are many, many grammatical sentences that are considered to be bad by English teachers. For instance: 10) There were like ten thousand people at the poetry reading. If we ask a native speaker of English whether (10) is good, she might reject it because she is been taught that sentences like (10) are incorrect . But English speakers say sentences like (10) all the time (Cf. with (6), which would not be uttered by any native speaker of English). If a sentence could be said by a native speaker of the language, we will consider it grammatical, regardless of the rules laid out in prescriptive grammars. b) Context dependency Consider the following utterances: 11) 12) Sure, we can. Yeah, he saw it earlier. If we present these sentences to a native speaker of English out-of-the blue, she might reject them. Why? Both (11) and (12) are inappropriate out of context. But given the right context, they are completely unobjectionable. Thus, we will consider them grammatical. 13) 14) Can we write a grammar of English? Sure, we can. Did Ed catch Lost in Translation? Yeah, he saw it earlier. Note the difference with (6): There is absolutely no context that can help (6). c) Semantic incoherence Finally, there are sentences that have bizarre meanings but that are syntactically wellformed. Here is a very famous example. 15) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously Note that replacing each word in (15) with a word of the same syntactic category yields a perfectly acceptable sentence. This shows that the problem with (15) is not a structural problem. 16) Colorful green toads croak furiously In this class, we will consider sentences like (15) as a separate category, i.e. as semantically incoherent. They are grammatical in a structural sense (i.e. they conform to the syntactic rules of the grammar); however, since no native English speaker would ever say something like (1...