language Flashcards
formal definition of language
systematic means of communication info using conventionalized sounds, gestures, marks, or signals having understood meaning
function of human language
is to influence people’s behaviour by changing what they know, think, believe, or desire
allow us to affect what other people think, and thus what they do
When we speak we put ideas into other people’s heads or even our own heads
How do we communicate in an efficient and effective way - it is fund. To how we function in the world as humans
challenge of language
need shared understanding between two people who use it
key power of language is our ability to express novel ideas say things that have never been said, think things that have never been thought before and then communicate them
list some of the powers mentioned of human language
communicate info fast
makes a social netowrk
store info outside of ourselves
creative expression
refers to time and place
phonemes
smallest units of perceived speech. Categorical speech sounds
Ta, ba, ki.
rules on how phones can be combined to form larger units is
phonology
how many phonemes does English have
44
morphemes are defined as
smallest unit of language that carry meaning, combinations of phonemes, - players - ‘play’ ‘er’ ‘s’ -
3 separate morphemes all meaning different things.
rules about combining morphemes to form Words
morphology
definition fo words
smallest stand-alone units of meaning
Morphemes have meaning but you need to add them to give them plausibility
Ind words can at least stand alone. Combos of one or more morphemes,
syntax
language specific rules for combining words
happy child vs nino feliz
what are phrases
words in turn are combined into phrases
limitless in English
phrases combined to make sentences
in English - what order do verbs, objects and subjects go in for a sentence
SVO
John ate the apple
subject, object verb
what is a sentence
a set of words/phrases that in principle tells a complete thought, expresses an idea
can consist of one or more phrases,
even more limitless
understanding of language that we have in modern linguistics due to the researcher named what?
Noom Chomsky
Chomsky argued what 4 main ideas
1) young children combine words in novel ways they haven’t heard before to express new ideas - argued this showing there is more to language than just repetition of what you hear
2) same as above, it can’t just be about imitation and repetition
3) we learn an underlying set of rules that we can use to generate sentences based on them once we have learned them
4) there is a built in mechanism in our brain that knows from birth that sentences have Subjects, Verbs and Objects - and we just have to figure out what order they go in in our given language
we only learn parameters of language, not the whole thing from scratch
who is nim chimpsky
chimp they tried to teach English to, to understand how people learn the language
named after Noam Chomsky
difference between syntax and semantics
syntax - rules of word’s order - morphology, phonology - how to put things together
semantics - meaning of language - how meaning is derived from words phrases sentences
how did Chomsky demonstrate that syntax and semantics are ind. components of language
used a sentenced that is grammatical but meaningless
‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’
what sentences is ungrammatical but meaningful
colourful green ants crawls furiously
phrase structure is generated from…
Generative Grammar - set of rules that specify what orders and combinations these roles can occur in
what is generative grammar
set of rules that specify what orders and combinations these roles can occur in
what is a noun phrase
consist of an optional article followed by a noun
fill in an article like ‘the’ and a noun like boy.
what is a verb phrase
verb followed by a noun phrase, optional article followed by a noun, constructed sentence
‘the boy hit the ball’
what are problems with relying on phrase structure alone to determine meaning
sentence example
what does this suggest
sometimes you have a sentence that has just one phrase structure and yet there are 2 possible meanings
the shooting of the hunters was terrible - did they got shot or was their aim the issue
suggests phrase structure alone isn’t determine meaning - it works the other way around
when we say phrase structure works the other way around what do we mean
look at these sentences
‘the boy hit the ball’, and the ‘the ball was hit by the boy’
these 2 have the same meaning and yet they have very different phrase structures
chomsky proposed - there are actually 2 types of structure involved in language understanding
Surface - refers to structure to words as they are actually spoken in order
Deep Structure - exists in our minds that is where the underlying meaning is represented - underlying phrase structure that conveys meaning
how do we get from surface structure to deep structure?
it was proposed our minds do this by
transformational grammar
take a deeps structure and convert it to surface structure when you want to say something and take surface to deep when you comprehend what someone is saying
core proposition refers to
the idea being represented by the sentence - like deep structure
the boy hit the ball vs the ball was hit by the ball
same meaning (DS) - what is their difference
emphasis
first one the emphasis is on the subject - the boy
2nd one the emphasis is on what was hit - the ball
what is ambiguity in terms of language
example of a sentence with multiple interpretations/meanings
studying ambiguity gives us insight on…?
gives us insight to the nature of that process our mind and brain does
A lot like how illusions can be helpful to get insight into perceptions
show the ways in which systems can fail and types of assumptions perceptual system makes
ambiguity serves a similar role for language
example of where ambiguity in language often appears
Newspaper Headlines - because they try to minimize their amount of words used
what kind of ambiguity occurs when a particular word was more than one meaning
Lexical Meaning
what is syntactic ambiguity
example
not due to word meanings,
due to multiple possible phrase structures that we construct in our minds to represent the relationships between the words
‘They are cooking apples’
‘I saw the gorilla in my pajamas’
what is referential ambiguity
often caused by use of ___
examples
has to do with certain words we use in language that necessarily refer to other entities in a sentence – ‘john grabbed his lunch, sat on a rock, and ate it’
the word it is an object - it refers to an object already introduced and so does it refer to the lunch or the rock?
caused by use of Anaphors