Linguistics week 11

1. Linguistics week 11 Finish assimilation; start morphology

3. This is a stylized representation of the inside of the mouth It shows the cardinal vowels marked by black dots and the approximate position of vowels common in many languages The next slide shows the position of English vowels on the same kind of chart The IPA vowel chart

4. Economy of effort: allophonic differences within one syllable • The vowels in ㄢ and ㄤ are different (front and back) because the speaker is preparing for the following consonant • The consonants /k/ in kit and cat differ slightly because the speaker is preparing for the following vowel. Tongue position for the first is further forward • Why do these allophonic differences exist? • In language, as in life, people are lazy! • It is logical that tongue movement should be minimized • As long as people can understand what we are saying!

5. Economy of effort: assimilation • Another syllable or word influences pronunciation, in rapid speech • How do you pronounce 根本? • This is an example of progressive assimilation • Cf Fromkin p305 on Akan language • What about 多少錢 • This is an example of elision • Also 謝謝妳 • Are there any other three syllable expressions that work like this

6. Assimilation in English and French • Usually it’s regressive • A phoneme is changed to accommodate (match) the next phoneme. • Voicing • Newspaper, of course, have to • News has /z/; newspaper has [s] to accommodate the following /p/ • French avec /avek/ in avec vous /aveg vu/ “with you”

7. Assimilation and elision are important because • We can understand better the idea of connected speech • Sounds are not pronounced in isolation, but depend on their neighbors • The distinction between phonemes and allophones becomes clearer • Mandarin has a phoneme /b/ with allophones [b] and [m] • And it has a phoneme /m/, realized as the phone [m] • Our pronunciation of foreign languages becomes more natural and accurate

8. Morphology, then • What is it? • It’s the study of word forms, and the changes we make to words • It’s part of the grammar of languages? • What is the other important part? • Some languages are morphologically more complex than others • What guess could you make about languages which are not morphologically complex?

9. Words. How many words are there in this utterance? • She was a good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went. • That was easy. How did you determine the number? • Now answer two further questions • How many different word-forms are there? • How many different lexemes are there? • And another question: • What do you think “lexeme” means? • Lexemes and word-forms are very like phonemes and allophones, actually.

10. Word segmentation • In English, words are conveniently separated by white space, in writing • This is not true of Chinese • And it is not true of spoken English either • If you know a language, you can separate the stream of continuous speech into words • Adults who never learned to read are equally aware of words • Words are sound + meaning units • Words (lexemes) are the units stored in dictionaries (and in your head) • With their pronunciation, meaning, and morphological structure

11. Two kinds of words • Function words • Restricted in number • A closed class • Have a grammatical function • Usually just one morpheme (a grammatical morpheme) • Content words • An open class • New content words often come into use in every language • Which words on this slide …? Chinese examples?

12. You think English is hard? • Ha! When I was at school I had to do Latin • See if you can find out what this is: amo amamus amas amatis amat amant • Or this annus anni anne anni annum annos anni annorum anno annis anno annis

13. They were Latin inflections • That means • The two lists each show the different word-forms, for a Latin noun or verb • In English, inflection includes things like • Number • Tense • BUT inflection does NOT allow for making a new lexeme • So sleepy is not an inflection of sleep • Write down 10 roots (like sleep) • Give one or more inflected forms (eg sleeps) for each • And one or more derived forms (like sleepy)

14. Inflectional morphology • In English, inflection includes things like • Number • Tense • BUT inflection does NOT allow for making a new lexeme • so sleepy is not an inflection of sleep • unkind is not an inflection of kind • artistic is not an inflection of artist (whichis not an inflection of art (Inflection and derivation task)

15. Inflectional vs derivational morphology • Inflection does not change the word class (syntactic category, part-of-speech, 詞類) • Derivation may or may not change word class • Derivation makes a new lexeme • create creative • Inflection just changes the grammatical ending of the original lexeme • create  creates • Inflection is productive • You can add –s to any verb, to make it plural • Derivation is not necessarily productive • You cannot always add un- to an adjective, or -ive to a verb

16. Roots and affixes • Unbelievable contains • One free morpheme • A root and two affixes • One prefix and one suffix • In English, there are derivational prefixes and suffixes • There are no inflectional prefixes • Suffixes are more common in the world’s languages • But Thai has only prefixes – no suffixes • Plural in the Zapotec language is realized by a prefix, not a suffix

17. Infixes • In Tagalog • sulat = write • sumulat = wrote • sinulat = was written • What is the root morpheme here? • What are the affixes? • Yule describes a kind of infix used in English • I don’t want to go to uni-bloody-versity • Is there any infixing in Mandarin, do you think?

18. Reduplication • Afrikaans • dik = ‘thick’; dikdik = ‘very thick’ • Motu (Papua New Guinea) • mero = boy; memero = boys • meromero = little boy • How do you say ‘little boys’ in this language? • And – you guessed it – what uses does reduplication have in Mandarin?

19. Reading • Read Chapter 7 • Answer the Study Questions • Don’t look at page 255 until you have finished!