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A very, very brief introduction to linguistics

Delve into the multifaceted realm of linguistics, encompassing phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Understand the physical properties of sounds, word structures, sentence formation, and meaning interpretation. Discover the intersection of linguistics with computer science, psychology, and more.

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A very, very brief introduction to linguistics

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  1. A very, very briefintroduction to linguistics Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin

  2. What is linguistics? • The study of language in all its manifestations • 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 Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin

  3. Phonetics • Phonetics studies the sounds used in spoken language • What are their physical properties? • How are they produced? • How are they perceived? • Phonetic problems: • 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

  4. Phonology • Phonology studies the role sound plays in speech • Abstracts away from purely acoustic properties • Looks at what distinct sounds (phonemes) there are in a language • 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: • 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

  5. Morphology • Morphology studies the structure of words • What is a word? • Minimal sound-meaning unit: morpheme • Bound morphemes: prefixes, suffixes, inflections… • Free morphemes: “words” • Derivational morphology • Construction of words from roots and affixes • inter+national  international • International + ize  internationalize • Internationalize + ation  internationalization • Inflectional morphology • bottle  bottles Computational Linguistics, NLL Riga 2008, by Pawel Sirotkin

  6. Morphology • Morphological problems: • Ambiguity • What does „scarcity“ mean? • What can we find out about an unknown word? • 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

  7. Syntax • Syntax studies the structure of sentences • How can we put words together to get sentences? • 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

  8. Syntax • Syntactic problems: • Ambiguity • The woman saw the man with the binoculars • I made her duck • Control • I asked her to call Marta. • I promised her to call Marta. • Coordination • John and Alex and Chris and Alice are married. • “Garden paths” • 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

  9. Semantics • Semantics studies the meaning of utterances • What meanings do words have? • How does meaning change in different contexts? • May be a question for progmatics… • Semantic problems: • Word sense ambiguity • Round, bank, on… • Scope ambiguity • Every man loves a woman • Co-reference and anaphora • 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

  10. Pragmatics • Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said. • What do we imply by an utterance? • “John regrets that he voted for Clinton”. • “How old are you?” – “Closer to 30 than to 20.” • When is an utterance true or false? • “The current king of France is bald”. • What do we intend by an utterance? • “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

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