ling final

phrase-structure expansion rules

- generate underlying constituent structures These various NP patterns can be represented 1. NP → N (NP consists of N) 2. NP → Det N (NP consists of Det + N) 3. NP → Det N PP (NP consists of Det + N + PP) 4. NP → Det A N (NP consists of Det + A + N)

testing constituency

- movement, substitution, coordination - Exploring levels of constituency has proven to be a productive enterprise for theories of syntax, as has testing for and comparing constituent structures across languages

Hierarchical Ordering of Constituents

- there is more to the organization of a sentence than the linear order of its words - represent two possible constituent structures for gullible boys and girls and capture the fact that the linear string has two possible internal organizations—and therefore two readings or interpretations - gullible boys and girls.

affective meaning

- what the speaker feels about the content or the ongoing context an aspect of semantics - words/signs can be used to add or change meaning - register levels - using "explained" vs. "boasted" = different affective meaning

Conversness

-Characterizes a reciprocal semantic relationship between pairs or words -If A is the husband of B, then B is the wife of A -Thus, husband and wife are in a converse relationship -It is about roles defining relations -Reciprocal proceses -Go and come -Buy and sell -Kinship -Father and son -Uncle/aunt and niece/nephew

tree diagram

A useful way to represent constituents and their relationships to one another in phrases and clauses

synonymous

Alike or close in meaning; closely related that they paraphrase one another 3. You are too young to drink. You are not old enough to drink.

intransitive

An action verb that does not have a direct object - Jacob won.

homonym

word that sounds like another but differs in meaning and spelling have the same spelling but different meanings (and sometimes different pronunciations), such as dove 'a small bird with cooing voice' and dove 'past tense of dive' or conduct as a verb and conduct as a noun, where the verb has primary stress on the second syllable and the noun has it on the first syllable A language such as Hawaiian, which has a restricted set of possible words because of its phonological structure, has a good deal more homonymy than English has

Meronymy (part-whole relationships)

pairs such as hand and arm or room and house. In each pair, the referent of the first term is part of the referent of the second term. as second and minute, minute and hour, hour and day, day and week, none of which could be described without reference to the fact that one is a subdivision of the other

In order to explain how speakers relate two structures to one another (such as Sydney doesn't believe in poltergeists and Doesn't Sydney believe in poltergeists?), linguists

posit an operation that transforms the structure underlying the basic declarative sentence into the structure underlying the interrogative one

content words

principally nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs—have meaning in that they refer to concrete objects and abstract concepts; are marked as characteristic of particular social, ethnic, and regional dialects and of particular contexts; and convey information about the feelings and attitudes of speakers

syntactic point of view

the verb is the pivotal element in a clause, and its subcategorization determines what kinds of complements it may have

ambigious

two possible readings duck may be a verb referring to the act of bending over quickly (while walking through a low doorway, for example), or it may be a noun referring to a type of waterfowl. These interpretations give the sentence two distinct meanings

semantic field and markedness

we now turn to identifying types of relationships between words.

substitution

- of pronouns and other pro-forms offers another method for identifying constituents. When a pro-form (for example, a pronoun or a "pro-verb") can substitute for a particular string of words in a sentence, that string of words is a constituent. - a. Josh gained a huge lead, and Beth gained one, too. (So a huge lead is a constituent.) b. Josh gained a huge lead, and Beth did, too. (So gained a huge lead is a constituent.)

movement operations

are extremely common in the languages of the world, and some theoretical models of syntax limit all syntactic operations essentially to movement operations

pragmatic

attends more to the relationship of an utterance to its context

subject

can be defined as the NP that is immediately dominated by S

speakers

can generate an unlimited number of sentences from a finite number of operations for combining phrases

reference

concerns the ability of linguistic expressions to refer to real-world entities The same phrase can be referential in one utterance and nonreferential in another. Note, too, that reference cannot be equated with definiteness

Sentences (and clauses)

consist of a verb and an appropriate set of NPs.

Antynomy

derives from the Greek root anti- ('opposite') and denotes opposition in meaning - is a binary relationship that can characterize a relationship between only two words at a time. Terms A and B are antonyms if when A describes a referent, B cannot describe the same referent, and vice versa - are pairs of adjectives that describe opposite notions: large and small, wide and narrow, hot and cold, married and single, alive and dead. - binary relationship between terms with complementary meanings. -large and small, single and married

intransitive and transitive

determines whether its clause may contain an object or not.

linguistic meaning

encompasses both sense and reference referential meaning (the real-world object or concept picked out or described by an expression) and sense meaning

sense meaning

expressions mean what they mean - In general, we cannot equate the meaning of an expression with the referent of the expression. We say that expressions have "senses" as well as referents, and any theory of semantics must take sense meaning into account

signal grammatical relationships.

father, pigeon, stir-fry, and democracy, which refer to objects, actions, or abstract concepts. It also contains function words such as the conjunctions if, however, and or; the determiners a, the, and these; and the auxiliaries may, should, and will

languages

generally have referring expressions and predication expressions.

scope

important matter in determining meaning, and because the scope of modifiers has proven crucial in interpreting legal matters, including contracts and statutes themselves, many a case has come before the courts—including the United States Supreme Court—contesting the scope of an adjective or adverb modifier

meaning

is a multifaceted notion. A sentence may be meaningful and true because it states a fact about the world or because the speaker is telling the truth. Two sentences may be related to each other because they mean exactly the same thing or because one implies the other. Finally, when we feel there is something wrong with the meaning of a sentence, it may be because the sentence is contradictory, anomalous, ambiguous, or merely vague. One goal of semantics is to distinguish among these different ways in which language "means."

syntactic terms, a referring expression

is a noun phrase (NP) and a predication expression a verb phrase (VP)

Sentence semantics

is concerned with semantic roles and with the relationship between words and constituents within a sentence.

direct object

is defined as an NP that is immediately dominated by VP

Semantics

is the branch of linguistics that examines word and sentence meaning while generally ignoring context.

spatial dexis

is the marking of the orientation or position in space Of the referent of a linguistic expression are demonstratives (this, that) and adverbs (here, there). Demonstratives and adverb the directional verbs go and come also carry deictic information, as do bring and take. This (proximate—close to the speaker) and that (remote—relatively distant from the speaker) thus represents the orientation of actions and states in space, and it is most commonly conveyed by demonstratives and by adverbs of Place

Oblique

is the term for NPs that are not subject, object, or indirect object; in English an oblique is realized as the object of a preposition (The vampire pointed to (his teeth)

Posessor

is the term for entities showing possession (Josh's new MINI)

members

less=easier to remember 1. blue, red, yellow, green, black, purple more=difficult to remember 2. indigo, saffron, royal blue, aquamarine, bisque

synonymous

meaning the same as - movie, film, flick, and motion picture - we can say that term A is synonymous with term B if every referent of A is a referent of B and vice versa. For example, if every movie is a film and every film is a movie, the terms movie and film are -judgment on linguistic meaning only - At the social and affective levels, however, they are not synonymous

Modality

mood, is a category through which speakers can convey their attitude toward the truth or reliability of their assertions (called epistemic modality) or express obligation, permission, or suggestion (called deontic modality)

head

of a phrase is its pivotal, central element, and heads may have specifiers and complements.

tense

of the verb determines the time reference of the entire clause refers to both word meaning and clause meaning.

Coordination

only constituents of the same kind can be conjoined by a coordinator like and and or, coordination can offer evidence of constituency - a. For graduation, Ashley was given a Toyota Prius and a year's supply of fuel. (NPs) b. Smokey scampered into the house and scarfed down her dinner. (VPs)

constituents

organized group of words

temporal dexis

orientation or position of the referent of actions and events in time before, last year, tomorrow, now, and this evening can be marked through tense, encoded on the verb with affixes, or expressed in an independent morpheme. In English, you must make an obligatory choice between the past-tense and the nonpast-tense form of verbs. Tyler bikes to school every day. (nonpast tense) Tyler biked to school every day. (past tense distinct verbal inflection (it lacks a fu- ture tense) but uses a multiword verb in the nonpast tense. Tyler will walk to school next week. (nonpast tense for future time) The most basic point of reference for tense is the moment at which the sen- tence is uttered. The train arrived. (any time before the utterance moment) The train is arriving. (at the moment of utterance) The train will arrive. (any time after the utterance moment) When the point of reference is some point in time other than the moment of utterance we say that tense is relative.

structural ambiguity

a situation in which a single phrase or sentence has two (or more) different underlying structures and interpretations

subordinators

- An embedded clause may be introduced by a word that would not occur if the clause stood as an independent sentence - such an introductory word serves to mark the beginning of an embedded clause and help identify its function in the sentence. - Not all embedded clauses are introduced by a subordinator. - Sentence 1 above may have a subordinator (Megan said that Lou cried), but it doesn't require one (Megan said Lou cried), whereas sentence 2 (That Brittany won the marathon surprised Samantha) requires a subordinator

Syntax

- The operations governing the formation of sentences constitute the syntax of a language. The study of sentence structure. - is the part of grammar that governs the organization of words in phrases and sentences—the sentences speakers utter to make statements, ask questions, give directives, and so on. - The study of syntax addresses the structure of sentences and their relationships to one another both structurally and functionally.The operations governing the formation of sentences constitute the syntax of a language. The study of sentence structure

grammatical relations

- The term used to capture the syntactic, or structural, relationship in a clause between an NP and the verb or of subject and direct object - indicate the syntactic role that an NP plays in its clause, and that role cannot be equated with anything else, including meaning

movement

- a string of words that can be moved in a syntactic operation functions as a unit and is a constituent. - "He sold the car to Kyle's cousin at Penn", we noted that one reading could be paraphrased as "At Penn he sold the car to Kyle's cousin". Moving at Penn to the front of its sentence demonstrates that it functions as a syntactic unit—a constituent

auxiliary verb

- a verb used in forming the tenses, moods, and voices of other verbs. can be moved in front of a subject NP to form a question - usually must appear in the surface structure of negative sentences - used to express contrast or emphasis (Jen certainly does exercise every day!) and other information such as future time (Tyler will certainly pass the course) and aspect (They were traveling then). - must appear in the surface structure of sentences

relative clause

- are typically introduced by a relative pronoun such as who (or whom or whose), which, or tha - is the term used for a clause embedded within an NP to form structures 1. The dean defended [the prof "who flunked" me]. 2. [The jewels "that Jake stole"] were fakes.

Positing underlying constituent structures

- captures the striking regularity of certain relationships between sentences that are otherwise not apparent on the surface - helps explain some elements of meaning and certain syntactic and semantic relationships between sentences

prepositional phrase (PP)

- consist of a P (preposition) as head and typically an NP (noun phrase) as "complement", so the phrase-structure expansion for PP is: PP → P NP - If NP is treated as "optional", as in It fell off (the table), it would appear in parenthesis: PP → P (N

linguistic semantics

the study of the systematic ways in which languages structure meaning, especially in words and sentences

social meaning

-the information about the social character of the speaker or the context of utterance - meaning made by our choice of word and sound alternatives when speaking with a specific group of people - representing actions, states, and mental processes, these sentences convey information about the identity of the person who has uttered them or about the situation in which they've been uttered - conveys social meaning, not only in the sentence as a whole but in word choice (y'all and chow) and pronunciation (gonna and nothin'). - Social status, ethnicity, regional origin, and context are all social factors

referential

2. Last night I saw (a good western) on HBO. (referential 4. She test-drove (a new Ford Fiesta) that she liked. (referential) 6. On Tuesday I ate at (the best Thai restaurant in the city). (referential)

contridiction

5. The unmarried woman is married to a bachelor.

nonreferential

Can you recommend (a good western) for kids? She'd buy (a new Ford Fiesta) if she found one on sale. . I'm searching for (the best Thai restaurant in the city)

clause

A grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb. - contains a verb and, at a minimum, any other expressions required by the verb as part of its structural characteristics

indirect object

Comes before the direct object. Tells to whom, for whom the action of the verb is done. (Claire threw JOSEPH the ball)

referential meaning

a word or sentence is the actual person, object, abstract notion, event, or state to which the expression makes reference, the entity the term picks out or identifies Alexis Rathburton, for example, would be the person who goes by that name - is not sufficient to explain how some expressions mean what they mean.

Transitive

Describing an action carried from subject to verb to object; needing a direct object to complete the meaning of the verb - Jacob won a turkey.

Semantic field

Group of words which are related in meaning a set of words with an identifiable semantic affinity - emotional states: angry, sad, happy, exuberant, depressed, afraid

Hierarchy relationship between words

Hyponymy and meronymy

lexical semantics

Hyponymy, part/whole relationships, synonymy, gradable and nongradable an- tonymy, converseness, polysemy, homonymy, and metaphor s primarily concerned with discovering relationships in the lexicon of languages They are basic because one type cannot be characterized in terms of another type. For example, an antonymous relationship between two words cannot be explained in terms of hyponymy, part/whole relationships, syn- onymy, converseness, or metaphor.

6. My toothbrush is pregnant

anomalous: toothbrushes are not capable of being pregnan

utterances

I now pronounce you husband and wife This sentence may be in different sets of circumstances: (1) by an officiant at a ceremony, speaking to a couple intending to get married in the presence of family and friends or (2) by an actor dressed as an officiant, speaking to two actors before a congregation of Hollywood extras assembled by a director filming a soap opera. -- creates different meanings even when the linguistic meaning of the sentence remains unchanged. It is therefore necessary to know the circumstances of an it in order to understand its effect or force. We say that the sentence __ in the wedding context and the sentence __ in the film context have the same linguistic meaning but are different ____, each with its own ___ meaning

gradable (sometimes)and nongradable.

If terms A and B are gradable antonyms and if A can be used to describe a particular referent, then B cannot be used to describe the same referent, and vice versa. If A and B are nongradable antonyms, the same condition applies along with an additional condition: if A cannot describe a referent, then that referent must be describable by B, and vice versa. So male and female, married and single, alive and dead can be viewed as nongradable antonyms, while hot and cold, love and hate, always and never are gradable. Typically, for gradable antonyms, there will be words to describe intermediate stages: sometimes, seldom, occasionally, often are gradations between always and never

aspect

In languages that do not mark tense on verbs, another semantic category called aspect is frequently obligatory. Aspect is not directly related to temporal deixis but refers to the ways in which actions and states are viewed: as continuous (I was talking), repetitive (I talked [every day]), instantaneous (I talked), and so on

What does the passive structure in the third sentence do?

It allows the writer to keep Perez in the spotlight

Semantics

Meaning of words and sentences

Deontic modality

Modal verbs which indicate necessity, obligation or permission e.g. might, could 4. Colin must come tomorrow. (command) Colin is coming tomorrow. (statement) 5. Dan may take the dishes away. (permission) Dan is taking the dishes away. (statement)

Polysemy and homonym

One modestly reliable criterion is a word's historical origin, or etymology. We can consider that there are two words of the form sound corresponding to the two meanings given above because they derive from different historical roots.

four phrase-structure expansion rules so far:

S → NP VP NP → (Det) (A) N (PP) VP → V (NP) (PP) PP → P (NP)

Hyponym

a more specific word within a category or under a hypernym superordinate

personal dexis

The pronouns I, you, and we—along with she, he, it, and they (and inflected forms)—are markers of personal deixis. When we use these pronouns, we orient our utterances with respect to ourselves, our interlocutors, and third parties speaker only I hearer only you neither speaker nor hearer he/she/it Tongan no 3rd Gender and number reflects the social status of referents can mark a number of overlapping distinctions: person, gender, number, and social relations. basic distinction between first person and second person is found in all spoken languages and appears to be a basic semantic category of deictic systems

lexical item / lexeme

The smallest unit of meaning (run, switch something on, have a whale of a time).

lexical semantics

The subfield of semantics concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words.

Linear Ordering of Constituents

The words of every sentence occur as an ordered sequence: Harry liked Peeves; Hillary hated the harp; Xavier comes from Xanadu; and A plump plumber from Portland poked a poltergeist in the park.

Passive Sentences and Structure Dependence

To form a passive sentence from an active one, interchange the subject NP with the direct object NP. (Provision must also be made for the preposition by and a form of the verb be, a matter that we don't address here.) --You can see that the direct object of the active sentence appears as the subject of the passive sentence, whereas the subject of the active sentence appears as an oblique (in a prepositional by-phrase) in the passive sentence

relative tense

When the point of reference is some point in time other than the moment of utterance we say s used in many languages when speakers compare the time of occurrence of two event

types of syntax operations

While it is not known how many types of syntactic operations exist in human languages, recent theories of syntax reflect evidence that syntactic operations are considerably more general than our relatively detailed specifications of examples from English or other languages might suggest - change one constituent structure into another one

Deixis/deictics

Words such as 'this', 'that', 'here', 'there' which refer backwards or forwards or outside a text - a sort of verbal pointing. Very much a context dependent feature of talk. s the marking of the orientation or position of entities and events with respect to certain points of reference.

Metaphor

sees it as an extension in the use of a word beyond its primary sense to describe referents that bear similarities to the word's primary referent. People frequently create new metaphors, and once a metaphor becomes accepted speakers tend to view the metaphorical meaning as separate from its primary sense, as in booking a flight, tabling a motion, seeing the point, stealing the headlines, buying time, studying a foreign tongue. occur constantly in day-to-day speaking and writing because they are a fundamental part of our thinking construct time metaphors as if we physi- cally move through time in the direction of the future: past left behind play a significant role in the development of cognitive linguis- tics, which has demonstrated how big a role metaphorical thinking plays in our language, our thinking, and our lives more generally

subject-auxiliary inversion

sentence(NP AUX VP) to question(AUX NP VP)

COMP node

serves as a kind of placeholder, a magnet so to speak, for relative pronouns such as that, which, and who, as well as for the wh-constituents in information questions

Epistemic modality

speakers can convey their attitude toward the truth or reliability of their assertions 1. Lily has probably left town by now. (probability) Lily has left town by now. (assertion) 2. Tyler must've been very tall when he was young. (conjecture) Tyler was very tall when he was young. (assertion) 3. Paul may come to the party. (possibility) Paul is coming to the party. (assertion)

function word

such as conjunctions and determiners also carry meaning Like individual words, sentences also have social and affective connotations. The study of word meaning, however, differs from the study of sentence meaning because the units are different in kind

languages differ in

terms of the number and meaning of demonstratives and adverbs of place.

underlying structure

the abstract structure of a sentence before any syntactic operation has applied; sometimes called deep structure

Polysemy

the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase Ex. Plain 1. 'evident, easy, clear' (plain English) 2. 'unpatterned, undecorated' (plain white shirt) 3. 'homely' (plain Jane)

4. Matthew spent several years in northern Tibet. Matthew was once in northern Tibet.

the first sentence implies the second, but not vice versa.

surface structure

the literal ordering of words in a sentence

semantic roles

the part played by a noun phrase, such as agent, in the event described by the sentence of a word is the role its referent plays in the action or state of being described by the sentence. - agent: the responsible initiator of an action patient: the entity that undergoes a certain change of state - experiencer: the entity that receives a sensory input instrument: the intermediary through which an agent performs an action - cause: the natural cause that brings about a change of state - benefactive: the entity for which an action is performed - recipient: the entity that receives a physical object - locative: the location of an action or state - temporal: the time at which the action or state occurs • are universal, but languages differ as to how particular roles are encoded in syntax

referent

the phrase Scott's dog would refer to the particular domesticated canine belonging to Scott. That animal can be said to be the referential meaning of the linguistic expression Scott's dog, and the canine picked out or identified by the expression is its ___

Hyponymy

the relationship between a superordinate "umbrella" term and the words that denote kinds or types of the superordinate term(hyponym); for example, the relationship between "FLOWER" and "carnation", "rose," "orchid" etc. - not restricted to objects such as mammal or abstract concepts such as color—or even to nouns, for that matter. - can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon - In Spanish, the plural term tíos can include both aunts and uncles, and the Spanish equivalents of the terms uncle and aunt are therefore hyponyms of tíos.