Transcript About linguistics - uni

A very, very brief
introduction to linguistics
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Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
What is linguistics?
The study of language in all its manifestations
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Usually focuses on spoken language
CL often depends on written language
Borders on computer science, psychology, medicine,
sociology, law, history, mathematics, philosophy, gender
studies, physics, politics…
Has many fields covering very diverse areas
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Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Phonetics
Phonetics studies the sounds used in spoken language
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What are their physical properties?
How are they produced?
How are they perceived?
Phonetic problems:
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How to classify and describe sounds?
What are the differences between English, German, French and
Russian “r” sounds?
What position does the tongue take when we produce “th”?
How and why can you feel the difference between voiced and
unvoiced consonants?
CL: How to teach a computer to distinguish between sounds?
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Phonology
Phonology studies the role sound plays in speech
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Abstracts away from purely acoustic properties
Looks at what distinct sounds (phonemes) there are in a language
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Minimal pairs: words differing in a single sound
Free variation: sounds that can be pronounced differently without a
change in meaning
Allophones: sounds that are pronounced differently in different contexts
Looks at stress, tone, intonation…
Phonologic problems:
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Why are homophones (weak-week, son-sun)?
What are the rules behind pronounciation?
CL: How do we tell the computer where to stress words?
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Morphology
Morphology studies the structure of words
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What is a word?
Minimal sound-meaning unit: morpheme
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Bound morphemes: prefixes, suffixes, inflections…
Free morphemes: “words”
Derivational morphology
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Construction of words from roots and affixes
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Inflectional morphology
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inter+national  international
International + ize  internationalize
Internationalize + ation  internationalization
bottle  bottles
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Morphology
Morphological problems:
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Ambiguity
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What can we find out about an unknown word?
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What does „scarcity“ mean?
unadd
embiggens
cromulent
What are the rules for noun plural or 3rd person singular
verbs?
CL: How to teach the computer to analyze words?
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Syntax
Syntax studies the structure of sentences
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How can we put words together to get sentences?
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Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. (N. Chomsky)
How do we understand the meaning of a sentence given the
meanings of its words?
What syntactic theory is right?
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Syntax
Syntactic problems:
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Ambiguity
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Control
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John and Alex and Chris and Alice are married.
“Garden paths”
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I asked her to call Marta.
I promised her to call Marta.
Coordination
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The woman saw the man with the binoculars
I made her duck
The prime number few.
The horse raced past the barn fell.
The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi.
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Semantics
Semantics studies the meaning of utterances
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What meanings do words have?
How does meaning change in different contexts?
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May be a question for progmatics…
Semantic problems:
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Word sense ambiguity
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Scope ambiguity
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Every man loves a woman
Co-reference and anaphora
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Round, bank, on…
Jim hit John, and after that he ran away.
The two men met. After he hit him, John ran away.
John loves his wife, and so does Jim.
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin
Pragmatics
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Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated
than is said.
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What do we imply by an utterance?
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When is an utterance true or false?
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“The current king of France is bald”.
What do we intend by an utterance?
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“John regrets that he voted for Clinton”.
“How old are you?” – “Closer to 30 than to 20.”
“Could you pass me the salt?”
“It’s quite cold here, isn’t it?”
CL: Is not really capable of having pragmatics problems yet
Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by
Pawel Sirotkin