Ling2001 Flashcards
Morphology definition
Subset of grammatical rules regarding how words are formed.
Syntax definition
Subset of grammatical rules regarding arrangement of words into phrases and sentences.
Corpus
Data set of sentences people produce
Two important concepts in Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Grammatical functions (a.k.a grammatical relations): SUBJECT, OBJECT, etc.
- Semantic roles: Agent, Patient, Experiencer
Morpheme definition
Minimal units that bear meaning in language
Free morphemes
Can stand on their own (i.e. complete words)
Bound morphemes
Cannot stand alone. They need to attach to something else
Clitics
‘Halfway’ between free morphemes and affixes. They are phonologically bound (attached to their host), but are syntactically free (more flexible in distribution than affixes (‘scope’ over a whole phrase or clause).
6 Morphological processes
Affixation, Compounding, Reduplication, Stem modification, Suprasegmental modification, Suppletion (Replacement of Stem)
Compounding
root + root (to make a new word). E.g. baby-sit, air-tight.
Suprasegmental modification
E.g. permit (N) (pérmit) —> permit (V) (permít), record (N) (récord) —> record (V) (recórd)
Suppletion (Replacement of Stem)
There is no way to reconstruct back to the original word. E.g. ‘Be’ conjugations (are, am, was, is, etc.)
Predicate definition
Encodes states, actions or events
Agent
Causer or initiator of events.
Experiencer
Animate entity which perceives a stimulus or registers a particular mental or emotional process or state.
Recipient
Animate entity which receives or acquires something.
Beneficiary
Entity (usually animate) for whose benefit an action is performed.
Instrument
Inanimate entity used by an agent to perform some action.
Theme
Entity which undergoes a change of location or possession, or whose location is being specified.
Patient
Entity which is acted upon, affected, or created; or of which a state or change of state is predicated.
Stimulus
Object of perception, cognition, or emotion; entity which is seen, heard, known, remembered, loved, hated, etc.
Location
Spatial reference point of the event. The location role includes the sub-types source, goal, and path, which respectively describe the origin (or beginning-point), destination (or end-point), and pathway of a motion.
Accompaniment (or comitative)
Entity which accompanies or is associated with the performance of an action.
3 Levels of Syntactic Analysis
- Constituent structure
- Functional structure
- Argument structure
Technical definition of a clause =
Clause = a Predicate + its Arguments
Predicate
a function (in the mathematical sense): a process which relates required participants to each other
Arguments
the participants required by a given predicate
Constituents
String of words that behave as syntactic rules
Five syntactic tests for constituency in English
- Cleft constructions
- Pseudo-cleft construction
- Topicalisation
- Sentence fragments
- Coordination
Copula
The linking element in non-verbal predicates. English copula is the verb ‘be’ (is, was, are, be)
Adjuncts
Additional, non-required constituents. Not inherent to the meaning of the predicate.
Subject
‘Highest’ grammatical function; constituent which is most syntactically ‘available.’
Object
Next ‘highest’ of the functions; constituent which is next most ‘available.’
Oblique
Most syntactically ‘inert’ function; constituent which is least syntactically ‘available.’
Tense
The grammatical expression of location in time
Aspect
Grammatical expression of internal temporal shape of events and states.
Main aspectual distinction:
Perfective vs Imperfective
Mood (or mode, or modality)
Grammatical expression of speaker’s attitude toward ‘possible worlds’.
Realis
Event has happened/claim holds true
Irrealis
Event might happen; event might have happened but didn’t; or actualisation of event is not specified
Epistemic
Speaker’s reasoning about, or assessment of evidence for, the event.
Deontic
Expression of duty, desire, permission for, or obligation to the event.
Noun classes
(Semi-)arbitrary division of nouns into two or more groups
Case:
A system by which NPs are marked to show either their grammatical relation (structural, syntactic case), or their semantic role (semantic case).
Determiner
Function morphemes that help narrow down what the N could be referring to.
Subtypes of determiners
Demonstratives, Quantifiers, Possessive pronouns, Articles
6 Logical Possibilities for Constituent Order
[SVO], [SOV], [VSO], [VOS], [OVS], [OSV].
‘S’ argument
Only core argument of an intransitive clause.
‘A’ argument
The most agent-like argument of a transitive clause.
‘P’ argument
The other argument of a transitive clause (also referred to as ‘O’)
Accusative alignment
‘S’ and ‘A’ is nominative case, ‘P’ is accusative case
Ergative alignment
‘A’ is ergative case, ‘S’ and ‘P’ is absolutive case
5 Manifestations of Alignment
- Case marking on full NPs
- Case marking on pronouns
- Form taken by verbal person markers
- Order of constituents
- Syntactic processes
Split ergativity
In a single language, some clauses show ERG-ABS alignment; others, NOM-ACC. Split can be determined by: semantic/pragmatic characteristics of the arguments.
Tripartite alignment
‘S’, ‘A’ and ‘P’ are all marked differently
Deictic (pronouns)
Referring to something in the immediate situation
Anaphoric (pronouns)
Referring back to an earlier linguistic expression. The thing that it refers back to is its antecedent.
Anaphora
Relationship between two linguistic entities, where one (the anaphor) gets its meaning by referring back to the other (its antecedent)
Voice
Mapping of a predicate’s semantic roles onto grammatical relations.
Active voice
Agent (if there is one) is the subject
Agent focus
Argument with most agentive semantic role = syntactic SUBJECT
Theme focus
Argument with most theme-like/patientive semantic role = syntactic SUBJECT
Relative clause
Clause that modifies a noun
Relativised function
Grammatical function that the head N gets from the modifying (REL) clause. Essentially the direct object.
3 main strategies to create relative clauses
- Gap Strategy
- Resumptive Pronoun Strategy
- Relative Pronoun Strategy
Root
‘Greatest common denominator’ after removing all affixes.
Stem
Whatever the inflectional morphology attaches to. Often is the root, but might be the root + derivational affixes.
Derivational morphology
Contributes qualitatively semantic/lexical information
Inflectional morphology
Contributes qualitatively grammatical information
Isolating languages (a.k.a. analytic):
Little or no bound morphology.
Synthetic languages:
Frequent use of bound morphology.
Agglutinating languages:
Morphemes like beads on a string.
Fusional languages:
Meanings don’t correspond to separable morphemes.
Polysynthetic languages:
Phonological words comprise many morphemes. Many are semantically ‘heavier’ than expected of an affix.
Heads:
The ‘main’ element in a construction. Determines the properties of the whole construction.
Dependents:
The ‘other’ elements in a construction. Arguments or or adjunction of the head.
Dependency is indicated by 4 things:
- Juxtaposition
- Morphology on the head
- Morphology on the dependent
- Morphology on both
4 types of linguistic universals
- Absolute unconditional universals
- Statistical unconditional universals
- Absolute implicational universals
- Statistical implicational universals
