1 / 42

STRUCTURES PROFESSOR IAN ROBERTS IGR20@CAM.AC.UK

STRUCTURES PROFESSOR IAN ROBERTS IGR20@CAM.AC.UK. Linguistics Tripos Paper 2: Structures and Meanings. COURSE OUTLINE. Lecture 1, October 13 th : Introduction to formal approaches to language Lecture 2, October 20 th : Categories and constituents

audra-schultz
Télécharger la présentation

STRUCTURES PROFESSOR IAN ROBERTS IGR20@CAM.AC.UK

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. STRUCTURESPROFESSOR IAN ROBERTSIGR20@CAM.AC.UK Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010 Linguistics Tripos Paper 2: Structures and Meanings

  2. COURSE OUTLINE • Lecture 1, October 13th: Introduction to formal approaches to language • Lecture 2, October 20th: Categories and constituents • Lecture 3, October 27th: PS-rules • Lecture 4, November 3rd: X'-theory • Lecture 5, November 10th: Wh-Movement • Lecture 6, November 17th: Pronouns • Lecture 7, November 24th: Syntax beyond English: a first look* • Lecture 8, December 1st: The architecture of the grammar* *Lectures to be given by T Biberauer. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  3. Lecture One Introduction to Formal Approaches to Language

  4. SUPERVISIONS • You have all been assigned to a supervision group. Your supervisor for these lectures is one of A Appleton, T Biberauer and D Michelioudakis. Supervisions take place every week, attendance is obligatory, and an assignment (exercises or essay) must be completed for every supervision. Contact your supervisor for the date and time of your first supervision and details regarding your first assignment. • If you do not yet know who your supervisor is, please see me immediately after this lecture. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  5. READING LIST • see http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/ling/courses/reading/Structures%20and%20meanings.pdf Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  6. HANDOUTS AND POWER POINTS from these lectures will be available at: • http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/ling/courses/ugrad/s&m.html • I will also email you a handout in advance of the lecture each week. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  7. SUPPLEMENTARY GENERAL LINGUISTICS LECTURES These lectures are intended to provide you with additional extra background in linguistic theory, and on issues of general concern and (in some cases) controversy. They will be held on Mondays at 5pm (unfortunately, in differing venues). The topics will be: •  October 25th Where do languages come from? (Lecture Room One, Sidgwick Site). • November 1st Historical Linguistics: Questions of reconstruction and relatedness (Music Room, Downing College) • November 8th The Evolution of Language (West Lodge, Downing College) Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  8. WHAT IS LINGUISTICS? Linguistics is the scientific study of language. This means • we do not pay attention to how things ought to be (prescriptivism – see below) but how they are; • we do not evaluate language aesthetically (as you may do in literary studies, for example), • we attempt to construct systematic theories about language (what this means will emerge over the coming lectures), and • We begin by defining our terms, so .... Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  9. WHAT IS (A) LANGUAGE? 1. What is language? vs What is a language? • language = the capacity that (as far as we know) most clearly distinguishes man from other animals (cf. homo loquens) • a language = a specific instantiation of this uniquely human capacity against the background of a given culture, e.g. English, Navajo, Warlpiri, Basque, etc. [NB various European languages distinguish ‘language’ from ‘a language’ – cf. French: langue vs langage; Italian: lingua vs linguaggio; Spanish lengua vs lenguaje]. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  10. natural language vs artificial language: • natural languages are languages spoken as native languages (mother-tongues) and capable of fulfilling the full range of communicative functions, and whose origins are obscure in that we can’t fix a (non-arbitrary) time or place for where they began; • e.g. English, French, ... • artificial languages are languages designed for some specific purpose and restricted in terms of their functions, which we can usually say when and by whom they were invented: • e.g. the language of logic (invented by Aristotle ca 400BC), computer languages (all invented since ca 1950), etc. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  11. other cases • Sign Language (actually not a single linguistic entity – there are various different Sign Languages, e.g. British Sign Language (BSL), American Sign Language (NSL), Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), South African Sign Language (SASL), etc.) • Semaphore/morse code, etc: • Invented languages Esperanto, Interlingua, Quenya, Sindarin, Newspeak, etc. • ‘body language’: frowning, shaking your head/nodding, crossing your arms in various ways, etc. • Music (?) Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  12. LINGUISTICS IS REALLY ABOUT NATURAL LANGUAGE • the implication is that linguists believe that it makes sense to study language in general and not just individual languages, and this presupposes that all the specific instantiations of language have something in common. • Thus: a major focus of linguistic research (particularly since the 20th century, but also before – cf. Robins 1997 for discussion; also Law 2003) has been the following question: • Do all natural languages have something in common not shared by other systems of communication? Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  13. 2. BRIEFLY CONSIDERING ‘A LANGUAGE’ • normative/prescriptive perspectives (“Don’t end a sentence with a preposition”, “Don’t split infinitives”, etc).; cf. also institutions such as the Académie Française, the Queen’s English Society, etc. • teleological perspective – cf. “I am learning Xhosa this year” “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy” [Max Weinreich, 1945] • a socio-political perspective: takes account of a distinction that’s often politically important, namely dialect vs standard language Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  14. “A LANGUAGE” II • linguistically speaking, all fully fledged natural language-systems (i.e. those with native-speakers) are equal: they all have systematic phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics, and they all appear to be of roughly the same level of complexity; • the dialect vs. standard language distinction artificially “selects” a given linguistic variety as socially privileged (cf. the different varieties of English that formed the basis for British, American and Australian English; Tuscan vs. Veneto vs. Neapolitan as the basis for Standard Italian; “Chinese dialects”; Hochdeutsch vs Schriftdeutsch etc.); • linguists primarily concerned with “core” linguistic theory abstract away from the socio-political considerations involved in dialect/standard debates (but cf. Language Planning, etc.). This is a form of idealisation. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  15. “A LANGUAGE” III • the notion of a standard language is another type of idealisation, one specially constructed by language planners. In reality, no given language is homogenous:  “We must in reality distinguish as many languages as there are individuals. [Hermann Paul, 1880] • recognition of the fact that no 2 speakers of a given language actually know precisely the same things about that language or use it in precisely the same way. • idiolect = the variety (lect) employed by a particular person (cf. also sociolect, chronolect, ethnolect, etc.) • for linguists: how much individual variation can one ignore in order to have anything coherent to study? [the Idealisation Problem] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  16. ATKINSON’S (1992:23) DEFINITION OF AN ENGLISH SPEAKER: • The person in question has an internal system of representation .. the overt products of which (utterance production and comprehension, grammaticality judgements), in conjunction with other mental capacities, are such that that person is judged (by those deemed capable of judging) to be a speaker of English. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  17. . defining ‘a language’ isn’t as simple as it might initially seem to be … Maybe it would be more productive to try to understand what ‘language’ is so that we can then define ‘a language’ as a specific instantiation (token) of this more general entity (type). Mostly, terms like “English,” “French,” etc. have a primarily sociocultural sense. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  18. 3. NATURAL LANGUAGE  Three main ways of looking at language: (1) language is a particular form of behaviour (cf. Behaviourist psychology of the mid-20th century), that is: o it is a system that can be learned by imitation, conditioning, etc. (stimulus-response) o BUT: (i) the process of language acquisition doesn’t support this view [on this there is no better source than Chomsky, N. (1959). A review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language 35(1): 26 – 58, available on-line at: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm] (ii) it is clear that humans use language creatively, not just as responses to stimuli (see our fishy sentences below). Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  19. (2) the functionalist view • The nature of language derives from how it is used, primarily in communication: (a) the informative use of language which involves an effort to communicate some content. (b) the expressive/affective use of language which intends only to vent some feeling, or perhaps to evoke some feeling from other people. (c) the directive use of language which aims to cause or prevent some overt action by a human agent.  o functionalists study language structure on the basis of the idea that it is the way it is by virtue of the functions it fulfil Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  20. (3) THE FORMAL, COGNITIVE VIEW • language is a form of knowledge • our uniquely human language capacity is part of our cognitive make-up (cf. S. Pinker (1994) The Language Instinct, London: Penguin). This is the view favoured in these lectures Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  21. THREE FACTORS BEHIND LANGUAGE (a) experience (what we learned as children) (b) perhaps an innate set of linguistic abilities (c) our general cognitive capacities – it is very difficult to tease out (b) vs. (c), and this question will come up repeatedly. o Universal Grammar (UG) is the theory of (b): our innate genetic endowment for language o UG is assumed to play a role in language acquisition and also in helping us to understand how we can make sense of the idea that specific languages are actually instantiations of a single type of entity, language • Here we’ll mainly be looking at a part of UG: the theory of syntax (how words combine to form sentences) Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  22. TWO IMPORTANT AND RELATED DISTINCTIONS I • I-language (internal, individual) vs E-language (external) • Here we focus on I-language, which originates from the three sources above • E-language is more complicated, involving society, culture, history, etc. • Concepts like “English”, “French” in their everyday senses are E-language concepts • (now look again at Section 2 in the light of the E- vs I-language distinction) Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  23. TWO IMPORTANT AND RELATED DISTINCTIONS II • competence (knowledge of how to do something) vs performance (doing it) • doesn’t only apply to language • I-language and adult competence in the native language are the same thing • E-language and performance are very different (the former largely socio-cultural, the latter psychological) Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  24. WHAT IS “COGNITIVE” ABOUT THIS THEORY? o this is a cognitive theory of language, because it intrinsically involves the human mind. In fact, it’s a theory of language which could be part of an overall theory of the mind • (or brain?). Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  25. WHAT MAKES A FORMAL THEORY? • A formal approach assumes discrete, systematic ways of forming complex things out of simple things. • The alphabet is formal as you can combine 26 symbols in various different, but more or less systematic, ways to form a very large number of words. • In formal syntax and formal semantics we combine simple elements (roughly words and their meanings) to form more complex elements (sentences and their meanings). Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  26. WHY DO WE WANT A FORMAL AND COGNITIVE THEORY? • It is widely believed that the best way to understand the mind is as a kind of computer. Computers manipulate symbols according to formal instructions (algorithms/programs). Language could be a program run on the hardware of the brain. • (Who or what wrote the program?) • So a cognitive theory is naturally formal, if we are trying to understand the mind in computational terms. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  27. 4. TIME FOR A REAL (IF SLIGHTLY FISHY) EXAMPLE Let’s start with a really banal (but ambiguous) English word, and build sentences from it. The word is fish: • Fish! [Noun/Verb Fish ] • The brackets are a way of saying “what is inside here is a Noun/Verb”. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  28. TWO FISH • Fish fish. [N fish ] [V fish ] [S [N fish ] [V fish ] ] “Fish fish stuff” (2) Fish fish! [V fish ] [Nfish ] [S [V fish ] [Nfish ] ] [SYouN [V fish ] [N fish ]] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  29. TRY THREE FISH ... • Fish fish fish. [N Fish ] [V fish ] [N fish ] [S [N Fish ] [V fish ] [N fish ]] [S [N Fish ] [Predicate[V fish ] [N fish ]] ] [S [N Fish ] [VP[V fish ] [N fish ]] ] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  30. THEN THERE WERE FOUR .. • Fish fish fish fish. ?!?? Fish which fish fish .. fish. [Relative clause fish fish fish ] [VP [V fish ]] [NP [N fish ] [N fish ] [V fish ] ] [VP [V fish ]] [S [NP [N fish ] [N fish ] [V fish ] ] [VP [V fish ]]] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  31. COULD THERE BE FIVE?? • Fish fish fish fish fish. (4) was really “Fish fish fish fish stuff”. So: [S [NP[N fish ] [Nfish] [V fish]] [VP [V fish ] [N fish ]] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  32. LET’S JUMP TO SEVEN • Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish. If a subject can be a relative clause, so can an object: [ [ Fish fish fish ] [ fish [ fish fish fish ]] ]. [S[NP [N fish ] [Nfish] [V fish]] [VP [V fish ] [NP [N fish ] [Nfish] [V fish]] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  33. BUT THE HARDEST AND MOST IMPORTANT ONE IS SIX • Fish fish fish fish fish fish. Go back to two: (2) [S [N fish ] [V fish ] ] We get to four by putting this inside a relative: (4) [S [NP [N fish ] [S [N fish ] [V fish ]] ] [VP [V fish ]]] Now do it again: (6) [S [NP [N fish [S [NP [N fish ] [S [N fish ] [V fish ]] ] [VP [V fish ]] [VP [V fish ]] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  34. BACK TO TERRA FIRMA (AWAY FROM THE FISH) • The girl the dog bit cursed the boy. Now we know a relative clause when we see one: (8’) [ the girl [ the dog bit ]] [ cursed the boy ] ] And here’s another hard one: • [S[NPThe boy [NPthe girl [NP the dog [VPbit ] ] ] [VP cursed ] ] [VP fled ] ] (9’)The boy who the girl who the dog bit cursed fled. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  35. CENTRE-EMBEDDED FISH • The boy the girl the dog bit cursed fled. • Fish fish fish fish fish fish. Fish which fish which fish fish fish fish. So: [S[NP fish [NP fish [NP fish [VP fish ] ] ] [VP fish ] ] [VP fish] ] Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  36. RELATIVE CLAUSES JUST GO ON AND ON This is the guy who loved the girl who befriended This is the dog who bit the cat who ate the boy who lived (Ron Weasley) the rat who lived in the house that Jack built. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  37. SO DO CENTRE-EMBEDDED ONES (except they’re really hard to understand): [ The rat [ the cat [ the dog [ bit ]] [ ate ]] [ lived in the house that Jack built ]. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  38. THREE QUESTIONS • what is the highest number of repetitions of the word fish alone that constitutes a grammatical English sentence? Infinity. The “house that Jack built” sentences show us that we can just keep on making more and more complex relative clauses with no upper limit (to competence, your performance will stop sometime in the next 50 years or so). Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  39. 2. have you seen these sentences before? Probably not (except maybe the “house that Jack built” ones). But you can, sometimes with a bit of thought, understand them. This is your I-language/competence in action. 3. where did you learn these facts about English? That’s the question!! We have very rich tacit knowledge, of even the silliest and most awkward sentences, which we were almost certainly never “taught”. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  40. A GENERAL VIEW • Our formal cognitive theory of what it is to be a competent English speaker involves: • Having a specific I-language that corresponds more or less to the socio-cultural E-language construct “English” (see again the Atkinson quote) • That I-language comes from the 3 factors: • (i) exposure to English when small • (ii) some language-specific innate “knowledge” • (iii) general cognitive abilities Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  41. MORE SPECIFICALLY, THE THEORY OF SYNTAX • Specifies the possible structures of English sentences (and for other languages), i.e. tries to characterise the native-speaker’s tacit knowledge of their I-language • Relates those structures to the three factors by: • (i) showing how adult competence arises from first-language acquisition • (ii) showing how English (etc) are related to the universal innate knowledge, i.e. constructing the theory UG • (iii) relating (i) and (ii) to general cognition Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

  42. We’ve seen with the help of the fish that the structures are: • (i) potentially infinite • (ii) built out of very simple elements • (iii) built by repeating the same operations on structure again and again Now we’ll see how all this really works…. Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010

More Related