Where am I?
o Course: HUL242-Fundamentals of Language Sciences
o Week 1: Lecture-1, Introduction
o Thursday, January 2nd
About this course
➢ This is not an easy course. There is a lot of technical material
to master.
➢ Everything will be fine if you do not miss classes and do the
assigned readings.
➢ Consistent and regular work is required.
Tutorials
o Date & Time:
➢ Wednesday, 1-2 pm, & 2-3 pm
o Place:
➢ LH 604
o Note:
➢ Only two slots with a room with 60 seating capacity
➢ We will be assigned more TAs
➢ Finalize it by the next week.
Office Hours
➢ Monday and Thursday, 3:30 pm -4:30 pm
➢ Also, by an appointment:
[email protected]➢ Room: MS-620
5th floor, MS Building.
Humanities and Social Sciences Department (HSS)
“Linguistics”?
➢ Linguistics is the scientific study of human language.
“Science”?
o Richard Feynman, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics
in 1965, describes the scientific method
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw
o Science is:
➢ Data
➢ Hypothesis
➢ Consequences
Linguistics as a Science: Yes-no question in English
1. John is talking to a boy. Is John talking to a boy?
2. John is talking to the boy who is tall . Is John talking to the boy who is tall ?
3. The boy who is tall is talking to John. Is the boy who is tall talking to John?
o Data -> systematic observation of the data -> hypothesis -> experiment/testing
on more data -> if disagreement, then reformulation of the hypothesis ->
experiment/testing on more data -> if agreement, then rule/principle, theory.
o The scientific process is iterative, with results contributing to further refinement of
theories and hypotheses.
“Human language”?
o What do you know when you know a language?
o 5 areas of competence
➢ Sounds
➢ How to put those sounds together
➢ Words
➢ How to put words together to make a
phrase/sentence
➢ Meaning
Human Language Competence and Linguistics
o 5 core subfields of linguistics
➢ Phonetics: the study of sounds
➢ Phonology: the study of sound patterns
➢ Morphology: the study of word formation
➢ Syntax: the study of sentence structure
➢ Semantics: the study of meaning
Other subfields we will not get into
o Sociolinguistics -How people use languages in specific
social contexts.
o Historical linguistics- How languages change over time.
o Computational linguistics/Natural Language
Processing - How to model different aspects of language
with statistical and computational models.
o Neurolinguistics- how language lives in the brain.
o Psycholinguistics- psychology + linguistics; how language
is processed on-line
o Applied fields- speech pathology, education-language
teaching and learning and many more
Languages are structured: Morphology
o Forming plural in English
➢ cat -> cat-s
➢ dog -> dog-s
o Descriptive rule
➢ Root + plural suffix (s)
o Can the plural marker come before the word?
➢ No. *s+cat, *s+dog
o Asterisks is used to show “unacceptable”, “ungrammatical” constructions.
Languages are structured: Morphology
o Institute, -ion, -al, -ize, -ed
o Outcome
➢ Institutionalized
➢ *Institut(e)-al-ion-iz-ed
➢ *Institutet(e)-ion-iz-al-ed
➢ *Institut(e)-ion-al-ed-iz
o Morphemes are attached one before another, depending
on its function
Hierarchical structure
“unbuttonable”
o What does ‘un-button-able’ mean?
o It’s ambiguous:
➢ Can be unbuttoned
➢ Cannot be buttoned
13
Hierarchical structure: Two possible analysis
o Un-button-able has two valid structure
(a) Adj (b) Adj
un- Adj V -able
V -able un- V
button button
o The prefix un- can be attached to Adj (as in left structure) or Verb
(as in right structure).
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Languages are structured: Syntax
o Noun phrases in English:
➢ Two old men
*old two men
*men two old
*men old two
➢ Correct order: Numeral -> Adjective ->Noun
o Sentences in English
➢ JohnSub sawverb MaryObj
*JohnSub MaryObj sawverb
➢ Correct order: Subject -> Verb -> Object
Languages are structured: Syntax
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Ambiguity
o Stop for pedestrians in crosswalk.
o Stop for pedestrians in crosswalk.
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Ambiguity
o Don’t worry about the tree yet. Don’t take it as official either (They’re
for illustration). This is where we will be headed. 18
Phonetics and Phonology
o We have intuitions about the sounds in our language.
o We can divide the sounds into consonants and vowels, for example.
➢ Three different sounds in “put”; two are consonants and one is
vowel.
o Is the vowel in “put” the same as in “but”?
➢ No!
o Is the first vowel sound in “women” the same as in “fin”?
➢ Yes!
Languages are structured: Phonetics and Phonology
o Word-initial two consonant cluster in English.
➢ Clasp /klæsp/– a word in English
➢ Clisp /klisp/– a “possible word” in English
➢ *Lkisp /lkisp/ – an “impossible word” in English
o The descriptive rule (i.e., generalization):
➢ The sequence of sounds “lk” cannot occur at the beginning of a
word in English.
Languages are structured: Phonetics and Phonology
o Word-initial three consonant cluster
➢ Spring / sprɪŋ/
➢ *Srping /srpiŋ/
o The descriptive rule: the sequence of sounds “srp” cannot occur
at the beginning of a word in English.
o But not all languages are so fussy. And some are more fussy! –Have
you notice my pronunciation of the word “Spring”?
Cross-linguistic facts
o An example from Hindi
Isko chhotaa chhotaa kaato actual sentence
this small small cut word by word *gloss*
"Cut this into very small pieces." translation into English
o How different from English?
➢ The object comes before the verb. English does not allow this word
order: (S)OV vs. (S)VO
➢ Intensificational meaning: An adjective can be reduplicated instead
of modifying the adjective with another adjective.
Cross-linguistic facts
o Hindi morphology and syntax are not similar to English
They are different from those of English.
o A linguist’s task
➢ to determine what the rules in the two languages are
such that a child learning English or Hindi learns that
language with equal ease.
Cross-linguistic facts: Universal Grammar (UG)
o How does a child learn a language (their native language) so easily and
so quickly without instruction?
o Noam Chomsky
➢ Human must have underlying principles that help them to acquire a
language easily and quickly.
➢ Humans are born with an innate ability to acquire languages and that
there are universal principles/rules that form the basis for language
acquisition across different cultures and languages.
➢ UG provides a sort of language template in our brains, making it
easier for us to grasp the grammar of the specific language we are
learning.
Next class
o We will start with Phonetics.
o Reading
➢ O’Grady, Williams, et al. (2010). Phonetics, in Contemporary
Linguistics. 6th edition. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
(required)
