Transcript Linguistics 001 - University of Pennsylvania

Linguistics 001
Spring 2009
Professors David Embick and Charles Yang
Basics
• An introduction to the scientific study of
language
• No prerequisites
• Satisfies Gen.Req. V/Sector VII
Webpage
• Information about readings and other
matters will appear on the webpage
• Homework assignments (and solutions)
will appear there as well
• Syllabus too
• http://ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2009/ling001
Recitations
201 REC F 11-12NOON WILL 421
Light
202 REC F 12-1PM STIT B30
Light
203 REC F 12-1PM WILL 5
Lannon
204 REC R 3-4PM WILL 4
Lannon
205 REC R 3-4PM WILL 5
Gorman
206 REC R 4-5PM WILL 5
Gorman
• NO RECITATIONS WEEK 1
Meetings
• Office Hours:
– Embick: Wed. at 2, Williams 601
– Yang: Fri. at 2, Williams 608
• Meet with your TA during the section, or
make an appointment
Grading
Homework assignments
Midterm exam
(Cumulative)Final exam
40%
20%
40%
100% (BUT)
IN BORDERLINE CASES ATTENDANCE IN
RECITATIONS AND ACTIVE
PARTICIPATION WILL AFFECT WHETHER
OR NOT GRADES ARE ROUNDED UP OR
ROUNDED DOWN
Exams
• Midterm: An in-class midterm exam on Wednesday, March 4
will test knowledge of basic facts and concepts covered in the
first half of the course. It will take the form of multiple-choice,
matching, and short-answer questions requiring you to explain
or illustrate a particular concept in linguistics.
• Final: A comprehensive final exam will cover material from the
entire course, with more emphasis on the second half (since it
was not included on the midterm). Date will be posted on the
webpage/announced in class. Like the midterm, it will consist
of multiple-choice, matching, and short-answer questions. We
will of course remind you several times about time, place, etc.
Homework Assignments
• Several homeworks will be assigned
• They will be for practice and extension
of the concepts discussed in class
• In the normal case the homeworks will
be available on the course webpage (as
noted above)
Homework, Part II
• Homeworks are graded on a scale of 1-10
• Homeworks will be returned in sections
• Homeworks will be posted on Wednesdays
and due the next Wednesday at the
beginning of class
• Late homeworks (turned in from Wed. after
noon to Thurs. at 3pm) will be penalized (see
webpage for details)
• The latest any homework will be accepted is
Thursday at 3, the time of the first sections
Homework, Part III (Rules)
1)
2)
3)
4)
Assignments are due Wednesday at noon
Email submissions are not accepted unless
permission has been granted for e.g. illness; then
make arrangements to email it to your TA
Makeup assignments are not available except in
cases of documented emergencies
Include your recitation number on your homework!
For more details see the webpage
Readings
• Bulkpack: Will be available next week at
the IKON copy center (in Levine Hall, at
33-34th and Walnut)
• Additional readings; class
announcements and webpage
What the course is about
Basic idea and outline
The Subject of the Course
• The scientific study of human language;
in particular, some aspects of human
language and its structure
• Some facets of language make it
apparently unique in the biological world
and in the study of cognition. Moreover,
language is creative and complex in a
way that warrants careful study
Aspects of Language
• We are concerned with the objective study of
language; not claims about how language
‘should’ be made by so-called experts
• By ‘language’ here we mean roughly the
system of principles that account for linguistic
expressions; languages that actually exist (or
existed) and are used by people
Some facts about language
•
Creativity: We automatically produce and
understand utterances we have never heard
before, whether they make ‘sense’ or not:
Seventeen and one half turtles wearing
yellow hats with penguins on them
began to simultaneously yodel as I
approached the food truck.
Put differently: Languages have a finite
number of words, from which infinite
sentences can be created/understood; it’s
not just about ‘making sense’
(More) facets of language
Moreover: Our production and
comprehension of complex linguistic
utterances is automatic and (typically)
effortless. That is,
• We do not have to think about using
language any more than we have to think
about walking or about using vision
• Compare this with e.g. computer systems,
which cannot come close to this
performance
Facets of language, cont.
Language is universal-- every human society ever
known has language
•
Unlike cultural inventions or technology-- which
vary in complexity from culture to culture-- every
human society has complex language
•
As we will see in the course, language does not
seem to correlate with “general intelligence”
•
This suggests that humans have a biological
capacity for language, when coupled with cases in
which children ‘invent’ complex language (to be
discussed later)
Facets of language, cont. II
One well-known(?) fact about language:
children acquire language easily and
without explicit instruction.
• It should be clear that adults do not have
this capacity; acquiring language in
adulthood is difficult and typically results in
sub-native performance
• This suggests a biological window of
opportunity for acquiring a language
natively
Innateness
•
A research program initiated by Chomsky;
two major points
–
–
–
Producing and understanding novel utterances indicates
speakers must have a mental grammar-- a kind of
‘program’ for constructing/understanding sentences
These grammars are acquired by children who are
exposed to fragmentary and noisy evidence, i.e. without
explicit knowledge of the rules, which, as we will see, are
quite complex.
This leads to the idea that the human brain is ‘preequipped’ to learn language, in the same way that children
are programmed to walk, see, etc.
Goals
•
We are going to investigate the idea that
language is innate or an ‘instinct’ by
– Looking at the structure of language; and
– Looking at how language works in the brain,
develops in history, compares with communication
in other species, etc.
In the next slides we will look at some of the
subdivisions of linguistic structure
Linguistic Structures, I
• Phonetics/Phonology: The sounds of a
language, and how they combine
There are many aspects of this that speakers do, but
are not aware of….
Example: the sounds [p], [t], [k] in English are pronounced with a puff of
air (‘aspirated’) at the start of a word:
pill
till
kill
This is not the case when [s] precedes:
spill
still
skill
• In general:
– How to represent speech sounds
– How these sounds combine/change etc.
Structures, II
• Morphology: The structure of words. Some
words seem simple, e.g. cat. But others are
made out of parts:
vapor-ize un-attain-able
un-lock-ing-s
Sometimes the rules are complex, and the
same pieces can combine in different ways:
Un-(lock-able): can’t be locked
(un-lock)-able: capable of being unlocked
Structures, III
•
Syntax: How words combine to form
sentences:
(a ‘*’ means that a sentence is deviant, in a way
that we’ll define later in the course):
1) The tall man… 2) *The man tall…
2) I saw John and Mary.
3) *Who did you see Mary and?
Structures IV
• Semantics/Pragmatics: What
words/sentences mean, and how this relates
to how they are used.
• Example: compare
– John hammered the metal flat.
– John hammered the metal naked.
 Or: Why is it that
Is it cold?
Is sometimes a real question, and sometimes a way
of getting someone to close a window?
Plan
•
•
Examine different aspects of linguistic structure, like those
sketched above
After looking at such structures, we will be ready to
investigate further questions, not limited to
1) Languages of the world
2) The acquisition of language
3) Language and the brain
4) Language change and history
5) Reading and writing
6) Animal communication and evolution
7) Language and Computation