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Aspects of linguistic competence 4 Sept 09, 2013 – DAY 6

Aspects of linguistic competence 4 Sept 09, 2013 – DAY 6. Brain & Language LING 4110-4890-5110-7960 NSCI 4110-4891-6110 Harry Howard Tulane University. Course organization. The syllabus, these slides and my recordings are available at http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/ LING4110 / .

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Aspects of linguistic competence 4 Sept 09, 2013 – DAY 6

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  1. Aspects of linguistic competence 4Sept 09, 2013 – DAY 6 Brain & Language LING 4110-4890-5110-7960 NSCI 4110-4891-6110 Harry Howard Tulane University

  2. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Course organization • The syllabus, these slides and my recordings are available at http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/. • If you want to learn more about EEG and neurolinguistics, you are welcome to participate in my lab. This is also a good way to get started on an honor's thesis.

  3. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Review • The quiz was the review.

  4. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Aspects of linguistic competence Ingram §2: Semantics

  5. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Thematic roles • What is a thematic role? • Some examples • John gave Mary a tomato. • John gave a tomato to Mary. • Mary hates tomatoes. • A brilliant idea occurred to Mary. • Are thematic roles marked in any way in English? • preposition • postposition • case

  6. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Specificity, reference, and deixis • Articles • indefinite • a/some: a cat, some cats, some salt • usually for first mention of the thing • definite • the: the cat, the cats, the salt, the sun • usually for all following mentions& things that are ‘mentioned’ (known) from context or common knowledge • Specificity • I am looking for a secretary who speaks Mandarin. • … if I can find one. > indefinite non-specific • … Her name is Mary. > indefinite specific • I am looking for the tallest man in the world. • … if I can find him. > definite non-specific • … His name is John. > definite specific

  7. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Reference • Examples • John scratched himself. • John scratched him. • John scratched John.

  8. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Time reference • What is tense? • Tense places events on a time line. • How many places are there on a time line? • past < present < future • What is aspect? • Aspect describes the phases of an event: start, middle, finish • I am talking. • What is modality? • Modality describes the likelihood of an event: • possible (can, may, might, should) • necessary (must, will, shall)

  9. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Assertion/presupposition • What is assertion/presupposition?

  10. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Aspects of linguistic competence Ingram §2: left-overs

  11. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University What are the parts of speech/syntactic categories? • Major/content categories • noun • verb • adjective • adverb • preposition/postposition? • Minor/functional categories • determiner: article, quantifier, demonstrative • pronoun • negation • conjunction: coordinating, subordinating • auxiliary verb? • Interjection

  12. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Words group to together to form phrases • What goes before ‘kissed John’ below? • She kissed John. • Mary kissed John. • That girl kissed John. • The tall girl kissed John. • The girl over there kissed John. • A girl that you don’t know kissed John. • Answer • A word that is ‘nouny’, or a group of words that contain a noun. • Notice: it does not matter which one. • We want a way to generalize over all of these possibilities, and the infinite number of alternatives that we can think up. • Let’s do this by calling it a noun phrase or NP.

  13. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Restatement of subject data as NP • An NP goes before ‘kissed John’ below • [NP She] kissed John. • [NP Mary] kissed John. • [NPThat girl] kissed John. • [NPThe tall girl] kissed John. • [NPThe girl over there] kissed John. • [NPA girl that you don’t know] kissed John.

  14. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Words to phrases 2 • What goes after ‘John kissed’ below? • John kissed her. • John kissed Mary. • John kissed that girl. • John kissed the tall girl. • John kissed the girl over there. • John kissed a girl that you don’t know. • Answer • The same ‘nouny’ thing as before. • So let’s also call it a NP.

  15. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Restatement of object data as NP • An NP goes after ‘John kissed’: • John kissed [NP her]. • John kissed [NP Mary]. • John kissed [NPthat girl]. • John kissed [NPthe tall girl]. • John kissed [NPthe girl over there]. • John kissed [NPa girl that you don’t know]. • Our sentence now looks like this: • NP kissed NP.

  16. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University NPs get around • English treats NPs as units, in the sense that they can appear in different parts of a sentence: • Which girl kissed John? ~ Which girl did John kiss __? • THAT girl kissed John. ~ THAT girl, John kissed __. • Not even Mary kissed John. ~ Not even Mary did John kiss __. • That girl is who kissed John. ~ That girl is who John kissed __. • Who kissed John is that girl. ~ Who John kissed __ is that girl.

  17. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University More phrases • But it seems to be that ‘kissed NP’ is a unit, too: • Kiss Mary, I would never do. • *Kiss, I would never do Mary. • What John did was kiss Mary. • *What John did Mary was kiss. • What did John do? –– Kiss Mary. • *What did John do Mary? –– Kiss. • John said he would kiss Mary, and he did so. • #John said he would kiss, and he did Mary. • Let’s call this new unit VP, so our sentence looks like this: • NP [VP kissed NP] • By the way, how do you know which ones are bad? • Because you are an expert in the grammar of your native language.

  18. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University A bigger unit • The structure that we just saw covers a whole sentence, and it would be convenient to point this out in some way. • So let us just make up a new unit, say ‘S’ for sentence: • [S NP [VP kissed NP]] • Many people find it hard to keep up with all the labels and brackets, though, so linguists came up with an alternative, the tree structure: S NP VP kissed NP

  19. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University Compositionality • Compare these next two sentences: • Mary kicked the mule. • Mary kicked the bucket. • #2 has two readings • Mary applied force to the bucket with her foot. • Mary died. • In the (a) reading, the sentence means what the sum of its words mean; in the (b) reading, it means something special, not predictable from the individual words. • This happens in morphology, too: • the past tense of depart: departed • the past tense of go: *goed, went • We call the (a) readings compositional, while the (b) readings are non-compositional or lexical.

  20. Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University NEXT TIME Ingram §3: Neuroanatomy of language ☞ Go over questions at end of chapter.

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