Transcript New Employee Orientation

Linguistics week 3
What is language? 2
Phonetics and Phonology
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A selection of Hockett’s design features for
language 1966), "The Problem of
Universals in Language" (write them)
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Rapid Fading
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Interchangeability
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individuals who use a language can both send and receive any
permissible message within that communication system
Feedback
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message does not linger in time or space after production
users of a language can perceive what they are transmitting and
can make corrections if they make errors
Arbitrariness
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there is no logical connection between the form of the signal and
its meaning
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More design features (he actually described
15 altogether)
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Displacement
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Productivity
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users can create and understand completely novel messages
Duality (of Patterning)
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linguistic messages may refer to things remote in time and space,
or both, from the site of the communication
a large number of meaningful elements are made up of a
conveniently small number of meaningless but messagedifferentiating elements.
Prevarication
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linguistic messages can be false, deceptive, or meaningless
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Duality of patterning
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A small number of phones can be
concatenated to form a very large number
of words (the lexicon)
AND, although the lexicon is finite, they
can be combined to form an infinite number
of possible utterances
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The creative aspect of language (Chomsky)
Also known as the infinity of expressions
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The infinity of expressions
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There is no upper limit on sentence length
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Some interesting examples on page 10
“One is a number…”
We can be almost as creative as we wish in
forming new sentences
Probably, no-one has ever said before:
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“Ming Chuan linguistics students usually ride
motorbikes through Manchester, wearing moccasins
and carrying a mop-bucket”
The utterance is “pragmatically odd”: it makes sense,
but…
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So, is anything possible? Can we
create any utterance we want?
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Maybe, a good utterance must “make sense”?
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But some utterances are impossible
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WRONG!: Chomsky gave the famous example
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”
This is syntactically well-formed (although
semantically it is ill-formed)
“Sleep ideas colorless green furiously” is syntactically
ill-formed
page 11 here, practise prag, sem, synt i/f utts in chin
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So, what utterances are OK?
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We have
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a finite lexicon
an infinite number of possible utterances
no room in our brains to store all those
utterances
no requirement to make sense…
So how is it decided?
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Our linguistic knowledge
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(=our knowledge of our own language)
This consists of
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A lexicon (a finite number of words)
A grammar (count noun!): that is, a finite set
of rules stating what is possible
» Note that we are not consciously aware of what
these rules are; like the rules for muscle
control!
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Back to what linguists do!
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Finite lexicon
+ finite set of rules (grammar)
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 infinity of expressions
Lexicon: easy.
- Buy a dictionary.
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Grammar: difficult.
- This is what linguists do
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Phonetics: the sounds of language
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Not language-specific
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Describes sounds produced in any or all
languages
Phonology describes the sound patterns in
particular languages, like English or Chinese
For example
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This is how to make the sound [p]
The consonant cluster /pr/ is OK in English, not
in Chinese
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Conveying a linguistic message
(diagram of this slide and next on board)
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An idea in speaker’s mind: semantic
representation
Then, a lexical (words) and grammatical
realization of the idea
A phonological representation, in the
speaker’s mind
Next…
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Conveying a linguistic message:
three phonetic phases (p41)
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Articulatory phonetics
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Acoustic phonetics
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How the sound signal travels through the air
Auditory phonetics
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How the speaker uses the organs of speech to produce the sound
This is the phase that we are most interested in, for this class
How the acoustic signal is perceived, including studies of the ear
(Of course, the final non-phonetic stages involve
interpretation of the message by the hearer… right up to
pragmatic level)
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Phones: sound segments
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When we know a language, we can segment an utterance
into phones
We can do this even though there is no break between
phones
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If we don’t know the language, we can’t do this
segmentation
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Cat has 3 phones
But we don’t say k—a—t
It just sounds like one continuous stream of sound
Actually all language is one continuous stream of sound
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The tongue (and other moving parts) move gradually
They don’t jump between positions
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How many phones? Say them to
your neighbor.
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Dog?
Rabbit?
Phone
Knot
Comb
China
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Two kinds of segment: consonants
and vowels
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Consonants: air flow from lungs is obstructed in
some way (p48)
Vowels: the air flows freely
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Vowels are often represented in English spelling
by a e i o u
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This is why doctors ask for “aaaahhh”
But spelling  pronunciation (p40)
Chinese:
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The consonants are ㄅㄆㄇㄈ…
The vowels are ㄚㄛㄜㄝ… (but not always)
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Problems with consonant-vowel
distinction
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Glides (or semivowels) /j/ and /w/ don’t seem to
involve much obstruction
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but most linguists think of them as consonants (check
page 46, Approximants)
ㄦ causes an obstruction, and is thought of as a
consonant by linguists
Some of the ㄅㄆㄇ symbols often represent two
phones, one consonant and one vowel
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Can you say which?
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How many vowels? How many
consonants?
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dog?
rabbit?
phone
knot
comb
China
I
π
pine
long
餓
他
龍
他們
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How many words, morphemes, syllables,
consonants and vowels in the following?
Count semivowels as consonants.
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Greenhouse
Red houses
Women
我們
Those sheep
老鼠
老太太
玻璃
John drinks coffee
他不喝咖啡
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Two kinds of segment: consonants
and vowels
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Consonants: air flow from lungs is obstructed in
some way (p48)
Vowels: the air flows freely
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Vowels are often represented in English spelling
by a e i o u
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This is why doctors ask for “aaaahhh”
But spelling  pronunciation (p40)
Chinese:
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The consonants are ㄅㄆㄇㄈ…
The vowels are ㄚㄛㄜㄝ… (but not always)
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Reading for next time
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Chapter 5; and
Compare KK 音標
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http://www.ysjh.cy.edu.tw/nineone/eng/phonics
/vowel.htm
with the US system used in our book
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(tables on pages 45 &48)
write the differences you find in pencil in your
book, if you want to
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Language presentations
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Next time (extra credit for being brave!)
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10-15 minutes
Talk about
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Serena: Spanish
?Karen: Japanese
Where? Who? How many?
Interesting facts about the language
Relationship with other languages
Sounds of the language
Morphology and syntax (= grammar)
You can use wikipedia and ethnologue to help you
BUT you must also visit the library
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Borrow books about the language
Bring the books to class
Tell us your opinion of the books and websites you used
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