English Linguistics

Piotr Pęzik
Thursday 15:15-16:45
05.10.2023

- Attendance sheet every week;

- Final test (P. Pęzik + K. Kosecki);
- Final exam;
- Homework for 12.10.2023 – Phonetics and Phonology presentation; To read the chapters 2
and 3, answer the questions;

Phonetics and Phonology (homework):

1. Phonetics – the study of the minimal units that make up language. The study of sounds in
speech in physical terms (consonants, vowels, melodies, and rhythms). Syllables; The
study of sounds, how they are made.

2. Phonology – the study of how sounds (phones) are organised within a language and how
they interact with each other. The system of sounds, can we make predictions about the
stress, etc.

3. Articulatory phonetics – the study of the production of speech sounds. It analyses how
words are produced in the speech organ. In articulatory phonetics, we want to know the
way in which speech sounds are produced - what parts of the mouth are used and in
what sorts of configurations.

4. Acoustic phonetics – the study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech
sounds. Physically analyses speech as vibrations of air (frequency, formants, sound
waves compositions);

5. Auditory phonetics – the study of the perception (reception) of speech sounds. Analyses
how speech is perceived.

6. X-rays - X-ray photography - the use of this technique can reveal the details of the
functioning of the vocal apparatus. It shows how a sound is produced; we can actually
see as it happens.
- Palatographs – an experimental method used to observe contact between the tongue and the
roof of the mouth. Can be static or dynamic.
- Spectrographs – equipment that generates a three-dimensional representation of sounds in
which the vertical axis represents frequency, the horizontal axis represents time, and the
darkness of shading represents amplitude.
- Phonetic transcription – a method of writing down speech sounds in order to capture what
is said and how it is pronounced. Usually based simply on how the sounds are perceived
when heard without any special analysis.
- Articulatory phonetics;

7. Why do we need a standard phonetic alphabet? – the phonetic transcription needs to be

used because the normal spelling of the word does not tell us enough about how it is
pronounced. The standard phonetic alphabet is needed so that we are able to transcribe
the sounds of any language. The standard phonetic alphabet eliminates the ambiguity in
spoken communication. More specifically, it was developed to clarify and avoid
misunderstandings in the pronunciation of specific words or letters.
- How bad is English spelling? – in the Middle English period, Henry the 5 th ordered his clerks
to produce a standard variety, called Chancery English, which was based on the East
Midland dialect. This means that the spelling was fixed in the 15 th century and it reflects
Middle English pronunciation. However, in Modern English, certain phonological
changes took place such as the Great Vowel Shift and mergers, which are not visible in
spelling which originated in Middle English.

8. Segmental vs. suprasegmental units of the speech signal:

• Segments – are the discrete units of the speech and can be further subdivided into the
categories of consonants and vowels. These sounds are easy to transcribe using discrete
symbols like [p] and [i]. Voicing, place, and manner of articulation – segmental features.
• Suprasegmentals – often apply to entire strings of consonants and vowels – these are
properties such as stress, tone, and intonation. These properties are somewhat more
difficult to represent using an alphabetic-like transcription system. Somewhere over the
speech segments/sounds, we do not know where/to what segments they exactly apply;

9. Describe the basic articulatory difference between the production of vowels and
consonants:
• Vowels – having only a slight narrowing while the air is flowing freely through the oral
cavity. We do not block the flow of air. Vowels are always voiced; The speech organs are
relatively apart;
• Consonants – are produced with a construction somewhere in the vocal tract that
obstructs airflow. While producing a consonant we block the flow of air.

10. Syllables: onset vs. rhyme, nucleus vs. coda:

• Syllable – phonetic definition – a basic unit of speech that has a centre with no
obstruction to the airflow. Phonological definition – a complex unit made of nucleus +
marginal elements. Every utterance has at least one syllable. A syllable can contain only
a single sound (monosyllabic). A syllable can be broken down into an onset and a rhyme.
• Onset – an optional element that consists of any consonants that occur before the
rhyme.
• Rhyme – an obligatory element that consists of a nucleus/peak (a vowel or a
diphthong) + an optional element called coda (made up of any consonants that follow
the vowel). The syllable nucleus is the “heart” of the syllable, carrying suprasegmental
information such as stress, loudness, and pitch.

11. Why are diphthongs classified as vowels? – diphthongs are also commonly referred to as
glide vowels because the manner of their articulation involves a glide from one vowel to
another in the same syllable (complex two-part sounds). Diphthongs might also be
referred to as complex vowels because they are composed of two simple vowels. Their
articulation is quite similar to the way we pronounce single vowels.

12. Basic transcription and reverse transcription of English – to transcribe something or

decipher the word by the transcription (exam task);
13. What is running/connected speech? - the usual form of spoken language, with all the
words and phrases that run together, without pauses in between them. Sometimes
called continuous speech. Connected speech – a set of processes which facilitate
communication and pronunciation;
• The modifications in connected speech include:
* Stress;
* Weak forms – certain function words may show reduction in very rapid speech;
* Phonemic and phonetic variations inside words and at boundaries (assimilation,
elision, vowel reduction, liaison);

14. Broad vs. narrow transcription:

• Narrow transcription - captures as many aspects of a specific pronunciation as
possible and ignores as few details as possible. Using the diacritics provided by the IPA,
it is possible to make very subtle distinctions between sounds.
• Broad transcription (or phonemic transcription) - ignores as many details as
possible, capturing only enough aspects of a pronunciation to show how that word
differs from other words in the language. The key factor in a broad transcription is
meaning - if a pronunciation detail can change the meaning of words in a language, it
must be included in a broad transcription of that language.

15. How does one whisper? – when a person whispers, their vocal folds are in an
intermediate position in which they are partially open (the vocal folds are located
withing a larynx - which contains the vocal folds and the glottis and is located in the
throat at the top of the trachea, at the Adam’s apple). While whispering, the vocal folds
do not vibrate.
Glottis, vocal folds, …

16. Consonants: place of articulation (bilabial, labiodental, interdental, alveolar, post-

alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal):
Bilabial (/p/, /b/, /m/) – you use both lips to create the sounds;
Labiodental (/f/, /v/) – lower lip and upper teeth;
Dental or interdental (/θ/, /ð/) – between the teeth; the air passes through the gap between
the tongue and the teeth;
Alveolar (/t/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /l/) – tongue and the ridge behind the upper teeth; tongue
blade is pressed against the alveolar ridge;
Post alveolar (/r/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/) – the tongue is in contact with the area further back from
the alveolar ridge;
Palatal (/j/) – the body of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate;
Velar (/k/, /g/, /ŋ/) – the back of the tongue is pressed towards the area where the hard palate
ends and the soft palate begins (velum – the soft palate);
Labio-velar (/w/) – the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum;
Glottal (/h/, /ʔ/) – narrowing between the vocal cords;

17. Consonants: manner of articulation (plosives, fricatives, affricates, nasals,

approximants, liquids, glides):
Plosives (/p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /ʔ/) – the air coming from the lungs is stopped at some
point during the formation of the sounds;
Fricatives (/s/, /z/, /h/, /f/, /v/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /θ/, /ð/) – restricted airflow, but the air is not
completely stopped;
Affricates (/tʃ/, /dʒ) – combination of plosives and fricatives;
Nasals (/m/, /n/, /ŋ/) – the air is stopped from going through the mouth (oral cavity) and is
redirected into the nose (nasal cavity);
Approximants (/w/, /j/, /r/, /l/) – the airflow is free, but not enough for a vowel;
• Liquids (/r/, /l/) - are formed with slightly more constriction, and their quality
changes (is “liquid”) depending on where they occur in a word, e.g., the beginning or end of a
syllable.
• Glides (/w/, /j/) – semi-vowels;
• Fortis consonants – strong, produced with more force (/p/, /t/, /k/)
• Lenis consonants – weak, produced with less force (/b/, /d/, /g/)

18. Vowels: tongue height (high, mid, low):

• High vowels – pronounced with the tongue body close to the roof of the mouth. Made
with the front of the mouth less open because the tongue body is raised, or high.
• Mid vowels – produced with an intermediate tongue high.
• Low vowels – pronounced with the front of the mouth open and the tongue lowered
(away from the roof of the mouth).

19. Vowels: tongue advancement (front, back) – the action of the tongue to move forward or
pull back within the oral cavity:
• Front vowels – the tongue is advanced and moved forward;
• Back vowels – the tongue is retracted or pulled back;
• The central vowels ([ʌ] as in luck or [ə] as the first vowel in the word another)
require neither advancement nor retraction of the tongue;

20. Vowels: lip rounding, tense vs. lax vowels:

• Lip rounding – while producing the vowel sounds our lips can be either rounded or
unrounded, which is one of the constituents of a vowel quality.
• Tense/lax vowels – the distinction between these refers to the quality and the amount
of effort involved into a vowel production.
• Tense vowels – are believed to have more extreme positions of the tongue and/or the
lips. The production of tense vowels involves bigger changes from a mid-central position
in the mouth. They usually have longer duration. Peripheral sounds, the distance
between the tense vowels [i] and [u] in the vowel chart is bigger than the distance
between lax vowels [ɪ] and [ʊ].

21. Suprasegmental features:

• Length – some speech sounds are longer than others. Substituting a long segment for
an otherwise identical short segment (or vice versa) can result in a different word. You
have to compare the duration of any given segment with the durations of the other
segments to figure out if it was long or short. This is what makes length a
suprasegmental feature. The duration of a speech sound may also be influenced by the
sounds around it. For example, as in the words beat (shorter vowel) and bead (longer
vowel). The place and manner of articulation of a following consonant can also affect
vowel length.
• Intonation - the pattern of pitch movements across a stretch of speech such as a
sentence. Different intonation of the same words can result in different meanings. Using
a rising intonation at the end of the utterance tends to make it sound more like a
question, while using a falling intonation makes it sound like a statement.
• Pitch accents vs. pitch tones - pitch is the psychological correlate of fundamental
frequency, which depends on the rate of vibration of the vocal folds.
- Pitch accent - a change in fundamental frequency used to put prominence on a particular
word in the middle of an utterance in order to highlight some information.
- Pitch tone - a change in fundamental frequency at the end of a phrase, for example, to
indicate a question or statement or to group words into a linguistic unit.
• Stress – a suprasegmental feature applied to entire syllables (syllable nucleus). A
stressed syllable is more prominent than an unstressed one. This prominence is due to a
number of factors, including the fact that stressed syllables are longer and louder than
unstressed syllables and usually contain full vowels.
• Primary – a syllable that is most prominent carries the primary stress (length, pitch,
and loudness);
• Secondary – means that the syllable also has emphasis but not as strong as the
syllable with primary stress.

22. Acoustic phonetics:

• What are sound waves? - they are disturbances in the air set off by a movement of
some sort (the movement of the molecules). Arranging air particles in a wave;
• Compression – a physical phenomenon resulting in a higher concentration of air
molecules within a given space (air molecules are more crowded together than usual).
• Rarefication – physical phenomenon by which air molecules become less
concentrated within a given space (i.e., pressure decreases) (air molecules are spread
farther apart than usual).
• Periodic sound waves – a sound wave that repeats itself at regular intervals of time;
• Complex sound waves – two or more simple sound waves combined. The sound wave
that is produced by the vocal folds is a complex sound wave.
• Harmonics – a periodic wave that repeats at frequencies that are multiples of the
fundamental frequency. The structure of a speech wave in speech units;
• Fundamental frequency - the rate at which the vocal folds vibrate during voicing. The
frequency of repetition of a periodic wave. Closely related to pitch. The first harmonic in
a sound (zero frequency); Used to describe the pitch/intonation;
• Vowels: formants (formant frequencies)– the acoustic signals that distinguish vowels
in speech. Amplified frequency ranges within a vowel that distinguish one vowel from
another; Appear as a dark band on a spectrogram. Peaks or maximal points in the sound
spectrum;

12.10.2023

- Every sound is composed of speech waves;

- Pitch – the fundamental frequency for a sound; Pitch = prosody;
- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – a rough approximation of sounds, is not perfect for all
languages;
- Trill – is produced using the tip of the tongue or uvula;
- Voiced sounds (or voice in general) are produced with the focal cords being closed. Vocal
cords provide voice;
- Most people are not able to hear the sound above 25.000 Hz (but dogs can);
- /s/ - is more prominent, higher frequency;
Formants;
- /ʃ/ - less prominent frequency;
-
- Exam questions: Name of speech organs; Is …. (for example, voiceless bilabial plosive) an
English sound? Provide an example of a word that has both primary and secondary stress;

- Homework for 19.10.2023: to read chapter 3 “Phonology” and answer the questions;

Phonology:
1. Main areas of phonology
2. Phonotactic constraints:
• Consonantal clusters – rules that govern which sound sequences are possible in a
language and which are not. Restrictions on possible combinations of sounds; Every
language has its own set of permitted segmental sequences; Mostly constrains about
how we can organise sounds withing a syllable;
• Syllable structure and distribution – usually many languages prefer to start a
syllable with a consonant first and a vowel second, but some languages allow more than
only one consonant in a syllable onset. English allows up to 3 consonants to start a word
provided that we start with [s] that is followed by [p], [t], [k] (voiceless plosives), and
then by [l], [j], [ɹ].

3. What phonotactic constraints determine the English pronunciation of:

• Gnome – a plosive plus nasal cannot appear at the beginning (in an onset of a syllable)
of a word  dropping the first consonant in pronunciation;
• Knife – a plosive plus nasal cannot occur at the beginning of a word  dropping the
first consonant in pronunciation;
• Ptolemy – two plosives cannot come at the beginning of words  dropping the first
consonant in pronunciation;
• Gdansk – two plosives cannot co-occur at the beginning of a word  inserting a vowel
between them in pronunciation;
• Psychology – fricative /s/ cannot follow a plosive /p/;
• Café – short vowels (apart from unstressed schwa /ə/) do not occur word-finally;
• Bomb – nasals (m, n, ŋ) can only be followed by non-homorganic sounds (m and b are
both bilabial – homorganic sounds); Bilabial nasal /m/ cannot be followed by a voiced
bilabial plosive /b/ in a word-final position;
• Tomb - bilabial nasal /m/ cannot be followed by a voiced bilabial plosive /b/ in a
word-final position;
4. Spanish speakers of English: Spain - a Spanish speaker, for example, may pronounce
student as [ɛstudɛnt], because in Spanish, the consonant clusters [st], [sk], and [sp] are
not permitted to occur at the beginning of a word without being preceded by a vowel;
5. Foreign accents:
• Sound substitution (th) – whenever a person speaks a foreign language in which
there are sounds that do not exist in the speaker’s native language, they might substitute
those unknown sounds by the ones from their language, for instance, French does not
have interdental sounds [θ] and [ð], therefore French speakers tend to say [z ɪs] instead
of [ðɪs] (this), and [sɪn] instead of [θɪn] (thin);
• Phonotactic constraints – the rules that govern which sound sequences are possible
in a given language and which are not and where in the syllable they can appear;
Languages can also have phonotactic constrains regarding syllable types; Every
language has its own set of permitted segmental sequences;
• Prosody -
• Fluency and discourse management -
6. Phonemes and Allophones:
• Phoneme – the smallest abstract and meaningful unit of speech; sound category (it
changes the meaning of a word); /t/ - slashes (a phoneme); The phoneme itself is never
pronounced (because it is abstract);
• Allophones – the realisation of sound categories in real speech; a sound variant (it
does not change the meaning of a word); It cannot be used to distinguish words;
Different pronunciation of the same sound; Various ways in which a phoneme is
pronounced; Noncontrastive – interchanging aspirated with an unaspirated sound, for
example, does not result in a change of meaning; [tʰ] – square brackets (an allophone);
Every sound that is pronounced is an allophone; An abstract realisation of the typical
ways of pronouncing phonemes;
• How is voicing of plosives meaningful in English? Is it true for every language? –
changing a voiceless plosive to a voiced one (and vice versa) would give different words;
• How is aspiration of voiceless plosives not meaningful in English? Is it true for
every language? – Noncontrastive – interchanging aspirated with an unaspirated
sound, for example, does not result in a change of meaning; BUT it is contrastive for
instance in Hindi – replacing one sound (aspirated) with the other (unaspirated) in a
word can change the word’s meaning (/pəl/ - means moment, while /pʰəl/- means
fruit).
• What is “sound distribution” in phonology? – a set of phonetic environments in
which a given sound occurs, that is, the sounds that come before and after it in a word.
For example, nasalised vowels occur only in the environment of a nasal consonant. More
precisely, one would describe the distribution of English [ɪ̃] and [æ̃ ] by stating that the
nasalised vowels always and only occur immediately before a nasal consonant, as in
bean and brand.
• Contrastive distribution – a case in which the 2 sounds occur in the same phonetic
environment, and using one rather than another changes the meaning of the word (thus
the sounds can also be referred to as contrastive). Two sounds can occur in the same
phonetic environments but will produce different words. For instance, [p] and [pʰ] in
Hindi have a contrastive distribution because when they occur in exactly the same
phonetic environment, they give 2 different words - /pəl/ - means moment, while
/pʰəl/- means fruit. Tap and cap – in contrastive distribution; The sounds found in
exactly the same phonetic environment that cause some kind of contrast; Free
distribution for allophones – no contrast; A special example of contrastive distribution is
a minimal pair;
• Minimal pairs – 2 words (with different meanings) whose pronunciations differ by
exactly one sound – for example, pin and bin, team and teen;
• Complementary distribution – sounds that are in complementary distribution do not
occur in the same phonetic environment – their distribution complements each other.
When sounds are in complementary distribution, we will not find a minimal pair. Such
sounds are never contrastive in relation to one another – they will not be used in the
same phonetic environment to produce words with different meanings. If sounds are in
complementary distribution, they are therefore considered to be allophones of the same
phoneme. For instance – speak /spi:k/ and peek /pʰi:k/ – [p] and [pʰ] do not occur in
the same phonetic environments – [p] occurs only after [s] but never word-initially, and
[pʰ] occurs word-initially but never after [s]. Different allophones (and phonemes) used
depending on whether they are surrounded by some context or not; Fricatives block
aspiration of plosives that appear at the beginning of stressed syllables;
• Free distribution – sounds that share the same phonetic environments but they are
not contrastive (do not change the meaning). For instance, leap /li:p/ (audible release)
and leap /li:p̚/ (inaudible release) – the choice between these 2 sounds makes no
difference in meaning, they are interchangeable in word-final position. Can be perceived
as allophones of the same phoneme.
7. Phonological rules – predictions which describe regulations of the pronunciation of
sounds;
• Use the examples of AmE t-flapping to explain how phonological rules work in speech
– /t, d/ are replaced with a flap when they are used in an intervocalic position in a
stressed syllable;
• What is a natural class of sounds in a language? /t,d/, /k, g, ŋ/, /s, ʃ, tʃ, z, ʒ, dʒ/ –
natural class – a group of sounds in a language that share one or more articulatory or
auditory properties. /t, d/ – the only oral alveolar plosives in English, /k, g, ŋ/ – the
only velar consonants used in English (natural class of velar consonants in English), /s, ʃ,
tʃ, z, ʒ, dʒ/ – natural class of sibilants.

• Describe the natural classes of:

* Sibilants – segments that have a high-pitched (fricatives) hissing sound quality.
The natural class of sibilants in English is [s, ʃ, tʃ, z, ʒ, dʒ].
* Obstruents – sounds produced with an obstruction of the airflow (include:
plosives, fricatives and affricates).
* Labials - a member of a natural class of sounds produced with the lips
(includes: both bilabial and labiodental sounds).
* Sonorants – sounds produced with a relatively open passage for the airflow
(include: nasals, liquids, glides, and vowels).
• Explain and exemplify:
* Assimilation - means that some individual sounds may be realised in a different
way as a consequence of being affected by a neighbouring sound. Assimilation
can be of two types – progressive (the influence comes from the preceding
sound) and regressive (the influence is from the following sound) and can take
place both within a single word or in between word boundaries.
* Dissimilation - rules of dissimilation cause two close or adjacent sounds to
become less similar with respect to some property, by means of a change in one
or both sounds; (Su(r)prised)
* Insertion - phonological rules of insertion cause a segment not present at the
phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word. An example of this
kind of rule from English is voiceless plosive /t/ insertion. Dance – dants;
* Deletion – deletion rules eliminate a sound that was present at the phonemic
level. Such rules apply more frequently to unstressed syllables and in casual
speech (English /h/ may be deleted in unstressed syllables).
* Metathesis - rules of metathesis change the order of sounds in order to prevent
complex consonantal clusters which are difficult to pronounce. Aks instead of ask;
Kordła instead of kołdra;
* Strengthening - rules of strengthening (also called fortition) make sounds
stronger (aspiration - aspirated plosives are considered to be stronger sounds
than unaspirated plosives because the duration of voicelessness is much longer in
aspirated plosives).
* Weakening - rules of weakening (also called lenition) cause sounds to become
weaker. The “flapping” rule of English is an example of weakening. [ɹ] is
considered to be a weaker sound than [t] or [d] because it is shorter and it
obstructs air less.
8. Implicational laws:
• Define and illustrate implicational laws - observations about language universals
that take the form of an implication (e.g., if A then B, meaning that if a language has
feature A, then we can expect it to have feature B). The presence of a less common sound
implies that the more common sound will also be used in the language. For instance,
voiceless consonants are more commonly used – therefore if a language makes use of
voiced plosives (less common), it will also make use of voiceless ones (more common).
• Implications for – observations about languages, making certain predictions, the least
frequent sound in English (ʒ);
* Frequency of sounds within and across languages – more common sounds have
wider distribution within a language (they are used in more phonetic
environments than less common sounds).
* Acquisition of sounds - children learning a language acquire the use of more
common sounds before they acquire the use of less common ones. As a result,
children who have not yet mastered the complete sound inventory of their native
language will use more common sounds when trying to say less common sounds.
The implication - the acquisition of a relatively less common sound implies that
its more common counterpart has already been acquired.
* Sound change - less common sounds tend to be less stable than more common
ones. Thus, in the course of language change, if any sound is going to be lost, it is
more likely to be a less common one rather than its more common counterpart.

19.10.2023

- Exam task – use the example above to explain the statement: Phonemes are abstract entities.
They are never pronounced:
Phonemes in English are the smallest abstract and meaningful units of speech, sound
categories that change the meaning of a word. Phonemes are never pronounced because they
are abstract. Allophones, on the other hand, are realisations of phonemes in real speech.
Allophones are noncontrastive, which means that that they do not affect a word’s meaning. Any
sound that is pronounced is, in fact, an allophone.

- Homework for 26.10.2023 – to read chapter 4 “Morphology”;

09.11.2023

1. Morphology:
- Definitions and overview of Morphology - morphology is a component of mental grammar
that studies the internal structure of words; Studies types of words and how words are
formed out of smaller meaningful pieces and other words; Major distinctions in
morphology – word-formation, morphological processes, morphological typology;
- Lexical categories – classes of words that differ in how other words can be constructed out of
them;

2. Word Formation:
- Derivation: the process of creating new words out of other words; Derivation takes one word
and performs one or more “operations” on it, the result being some other word, often of
a different lexical category; Derivational affixes may be attached either before or after
the stem;
* Open vs. Closed lexical categories – Open lexical categories - nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs – new words added to the language usually belong to these

categories; Closed lexical categories – rarely acquire new members (pronouns,

determiners, prepositions, and conjunctions);
* How stable are they?
* The process of derivation: affixes, stems – Affixes – the added pieces; Stem – the
thing to which affixes are attached;
- Inflection: the process of creating different grammatical forms (deals with forms of words,
rather than entirely new words); For example, inflectional affixes such as -s typically do
not change the lexical category of the word – both cat and cats are nouns); All the
inflectional affixes in English are attached after the stem;

Derivational Morphology: Inflectional Morphology:

- Open lexical categories – nouns, verbs, - The creation of different grammatical forms
adjectives, and adverbs – new words added of words; Typically, do not change the lexical
to the language usually belong to these category of a word; All the inflectional affixes
categories; are attached after the stem;
- Closed lexical categories – rarely acquire - Creates forms of words, rather than entirely
new members; Pronouns, determiners, new words;
prepositions, and conjunctions; - Inflectional suffixes:
- Stem – the smallest morphological unit that 3rd person singular -s (verbs)
carries a meaning; A stem might contain Past tense -ed (verbs)
more than one morpheme; Progressive aspect -ing (verbs)
- Affixes – prefixes, suffixes, and infixes; Past participle -en, ed (verbs)
Affixes may be attached either before or after Plural -s (nouns)
the stem; Comparative -er (Adjectives, adverbs)
Derivational morphemes - affixes added Superlative -est (adjectives, adverbs);
either at the beginning of words (prefixes) or - Inflectional morphemes - modify
at the end of words (suffixes) which change grammar function (-ed, -ing, -s), do not
the meaning of the word in some way or change the core meaning of a word,
change its word class, examples: teach (verb) examples: walk  walked, apple  apples;
+ er  teacher (noun), happy (adj) + ness 
happiness (noun);

* What are the inflectional suffixes in English?

* What about Polish?
* Morphosyntactic tagsets, eg. http://nkjp.pl/poliqarp/help/ense2.html

- Terminology:
* Morphemes. Free vs. Bound, bound roots – Morpheme – the smallest linguistic unit
with a meaning (e.g. the morpheme cat) or a grammatical function (e.g. the morpheme
---ed that indicates past tense);
Free morphemes Bound morphemes Bound roots
- Simple words which cannot - Morphemes which cannot - Morphemes which on the
be broken into smaller stand alone as independent one hand do seem to have
meaningful pieces. Can stand words (affixes like -ing, -y) – some associated basic
alone as independent words consist of only one meaning but on the other
(e.g. cat, dog,); morpheme but they cannot hand they are unable to
- Free morphemes - can stand alone like single- stand alone as words in their
stand alone as individual morpheme words; own right (e.g. rasp- as in
words and carry meaning by - Bound morphemes - raspberry);
themselves, examples: like, cannot stand alone as - Bound root - morphemes
fortune, place; individual words, examples: - that cannot stand alone but
un, -ly, dis- (happily, dislike, carry the meaning, examples:
unhappy); struct in words: construct,
restructure;

* Productive vs. unproductive roots, e.g.: -ify vs. -ceive – many of the bound roots,
including -fer, -sist, and -ceive, are the result of English borrowings from Latin and are
not productive (currently not used to make new words);
* Roots vs. stems - A root – by definition it contains only one morpheme; A stem – may
contain more than one morpheme, but must have a lexical meaning; Affixes that follow a
stem are called suffixes, whereas affixes that precede a stem are called prefixes;
* Homophonous affixes – affixes that sound alike but have different meanings or
functions (affix -er which can be both derivational [used to derive an agent noun from a
verb – speak-speaker] and inflectional [marks comparative degree on adjectives and
adverbs – tall-taller, fast-faster]);
* Content vs. function words:
Content morphemes: Function morphemes:
- Are said to have more concrete meaning - Contain primarily grammatically relevant
than function morphemes; information;
- Include all derivational affixes, bound roots, - Include all inflectional affixes and free roots
and free roots that belong to the lexical that belong to lexical categories of
categories of noun, verb, adjective, and prepositions, determiners, pronouns, or
adverb; conjunctions;
- Content words – nouns, verbs, adjectives, - Function words – prepositions,
and adverbs; determiners, pronouns, and conjunctions;
3.

Morphological Processes:
- Affixation - process that involves adding prefixes (un-, in-, dis-) or suffixes (-ness, -ly) to
existing words in order to create new words or modify their meaning or their
grammatical function, examples: happy  happiness, obedient  disobedient;
- Compounding - combining two or more words to create a new word with a combined
meaning, example: sun + flower = sunflower, book + shelf = bookshelf; Compounds that
have words in the same order as phrases have primary stress on the 1st word only, while
individual words in phrases have independent primary stress (bláckbird  compound;
bláck bi’rd  phrase)
- Reduplication - a process of forming new words by doubling either the entire free
morpheme (total reduplication) or part of it (partial reduplication); Reduplicant – the
reduplicated piece;
- Alternations - morpheme-internal modification (man-men, goose-geese, foot-feet);
- Suppletion - a root that has one or more inflected forms phonetically unrelated to the shape
of the root (is-was, go-went);

- Conversion - changing the grammatical category without adding any suffixes,

example: water (noun)  to water (verb), hammer (noun)  to hammer (verb);
- Blending - combining parts of two words to create a new word, example:
breakfast + lunch = brunch, smoke + fog = smog;
- Clipping - shortening a word by removing one or more syllables,
example: advertisement  ad, examination  exam, application  app;
- Acronyms - these are new words formed from the initial letters of a group of words,
pronounced as a single word, such as "NASA" (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration), VIP (very important person);
- Back-formation - the process of creating a new word, often by removing a suffix from an old
word, examples: the verb to edit was formed by back-formation from the noun editor,
babysit from babysitter;

4. Language Typologies:
- Analytic languages - these languages have a relatively simple grammar and rely on word
order and context to convey meaning (English). Word order is critically important to
encode syntactic roles; Made up of sequences of free morphemes – each word consists
of a single morpheme, used by itself with meaning and function intact; Purely analytic
languages are called isolating languages – do not use affixes to compose words; Word
order is used to show the functions of words in a sentence (non-analytic languages may
use morphology to mark these differences);
- Synthetic languages - these languages use affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and grammatical
cases to convey grammatical information (Polish and Russian). The word order is not
free, it is just less critically important to the meaning; Morphology is a key aspect in
synthetic languages because it encodes the meaning;
* Agglutinating - these languages have a highly regular system of affixation, in which
each affix represents a single grammatical feature (Turkish and Finnish). In these
languages, the morphemes are joined together relatively loosely, that is, it is
usually easy to determine where the boundaries between morphemes are;
Another characteristic feature – each bound morpheme carries only one piece of
information;
* Fusional - words are formed by adding bound morphemes to stems, just as in
agglutinative languages, but in fusional languages the affixes may not be easy to
separate from the stem; It is often hard to tell where one morpheme ends and the
next begins (Spanish); Another difference between agglutinative and fusional
languages – whereas agglutinative languages usually have only one meaning
indicated by each affix, in fusional languages a single affix more frequently
conveys several pieces of information simultaneously;
* Polysynthetic – these languages feature highly complex words that may be formed by
combining several stems and affixes; Complex words with extensive affixation;
Incorporating morphemes that represent different grammatical categories
(morphemes);

- Word order in synthetic languages - the word order is not free; it is just less critically
important to the meaning; Morphology is a key aspect in synthetic languages because it
encodes and conveys the meaning;

5. Word structure:

6. Morphology vs. Etymology – Etymology - the history of a word or phrase shown by tracing
its development and relationships; The scientific study of the origin and evolution of a
word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and
phonemes.

- Nonce-formation – the first time a word is ever used;

- Institutionalisation - the action of establishing something as a convention or norm in an
organization or culture;
- Lexicalisation – the addition of new open-class elements to a repository of holistically
processed linguistic units.
- Neosemanticism – a new meaning added to the already existing word; Not creating a
neologism;

16.11.2023

1. Syntax:
- What is syntax? – a component of mental grammar which deals with how sentences and
other pieces of linguistic expressions can be constructed out of smaller phrases and
words; Subfield of linguistics which studies what the permissible syntactic combinations
of words are in a given language; Syntax is broadly concerned with how linguistic
expressions (pieces of language) combine with one another to form larger expressions;
- Grammaticality/acceptability (judgments): when a string of words really does form a
sentence of some language, we say it is grammatical (syntactically well-formed) in that
language; If some string of words does not form a sentence, we call it ungrammatical
(syntactically ill-formed) and mark it with a symbol *;
A grammaticality judgement – making a decision whether a string of words truly forms a
sentence of one’s native language; A reflection of speakers’ mental grammar; A fuzzy
concept;
- Syntax vs. Semantics and how compositionality is achieved in language: both syntax and
semantics are concerned with linguistic meaning; Different syntactic combinations
produce differences in meaning; In one sense, syntax and semantics are quite
independent from one another. It is possible to have a grammatical, syntactically well-
formed sentence with a bizarre meaning (syntax without semantics: Colorless green
ideas sleep furiously - Chomsky – syntactically speaking, it is a perfectly grammatical
sentence in English), and, conversely, it is possible to have a non-sentence (semantics
without syntax) whose meaning we can understand (Me bought dog*); There is another
way in which syntax is independent from semantics – the syntactic properties of
expressions cannot be predicted or explained on the basis of an expression’s meaning
(Sally ate vs. Sally devoured*) – eat does not require an object as opposed to devour; So
although these two verbs are very similar in meaning (semantics), their syntactic
properties are different;
- Words vs. Phrases:
- Principle of Compositionality: the overall meaning of phrases/sentences is derived from the
meaning of their components (i.e. words) in a certain syntactic configuration: The
Principle of Compositionality – the fact that the meaning of a sentence depends on the
meanings of the expressions it contains and on the way they are syntactically combined;

2. Syntactic Properties (word order, co-occurrence and agreement): properties of

linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other
expressions, namely, word order and co-occurrence properties;
- Word order of English and other languages: how expressions are allowed to be ordered
with respect to one another; Deviating from the SVO word order rules usually results in
ungrammaticality; But: Topicalised sentences – OSV (Oh, apples I like), Yes/No questions
– VSO (Is Sally a student?); Default word order pattern in English – SVO;
- Co-Occurrence: if some expressions occur in a sentence, what other expressions can or must
co-occur with it in that sentence;
* Arguments, complements: if the occurrence of some expression X in a sentence
necessitates the occurrence of some expression Y, then we say that Y is an argument; So,
devoured requires 2 arguments: an object (an apple) and a subject (Sally); Complements
– non-subject arguments (an apple is a complement of devoured); If a complement is a
noun phrase, we call it an object;
* Adjuncts: certain kind of expressions whose occurrence in a sentence is purely
optional; It is also possible to add as many adjuncts as we like without making the
sentence ungrammatical (Sally likes [small fluffy brown] dogs) – attributive adjectives;
Adjuncts can be freely ordered with respect to one another; Cannot be added to ANY
sentence (Sally likes fluffy Bob*); Adjuncts are sometimes called modifiers (Sally likes
small dogs – small is a (pre)modifier of dogs);
* Valency of verbs: the number and kinds of arguments required - intransitive verbs,
transitive verbs, ditransitive verbs, tritransitive verbs [indirect object, direct object,
prepositional phrase];
- Agreements: a phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence (e.g. verb and its
subject) must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc.
- What is morpho-syntax? – morphology and syntax are often seen as tightly related
components of grammar and sometimes even considered and referred to jointly; The
name for morphology and syntax considered jointly as a single component of grammar;
3. Constituency Structures:
- What is a syntactic constituent? – the idea that certain groups of expression within a larger
phrase can form a single syntactic unit;
Tests… - there are several general constituency tests that can help you determine which groups
of expressions form a constituent in some sentence:
* Answers: one way to determine whether a given string of words in a sentence forms a
syntactic constituent or not is to construct a question based on the sentence and see if
the string of words we are testing can serve as an answer (if it can, it forms a
constituent; if it cannot, then the words in question do not form a constituent);
* Clefting: another constituency test involves constructing a cleft (a kind of a sentence
in which some constituent is displaced/moved to the left); If a cleft is grammatical, then
the displaced expression is a constituent; Does not work for all kinds of constituents;
* Pro-form substitution: the substitution test involves replacing a constituent with a
single word (or simple phrase); if you can replace the string of words you are testing
with one word and the result is a grammatical sentence, this indicates that the string of
words is a single unit or syntactic constituent; The best words to use for this test are
pro-forms (pronouns, proverbs);

4. Syntactic Categories: a group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties; All
expressions that belong to the same syntactic category have more or less the same
syntactic distribution;
- Syntactic distribution: refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can
occur; If two expressions are interchangeable in all syntactic environments, we say that
they have the same syntactic distribution and therefore belong to the same syntactic
category;

5. Syntactic Categories in English – a syntactic category consists of a set of expressions that

have very similar syntactic properties; That is, they have approximately the same word
order and co-occurrence requirements; When two expressions have similar syntactic
properties, they are usually interchangeable in a sentence; Since such expressions can
occur in almost all the same syntactic environments, we say that they have the same
syntactic distribution (e.g. Sally likes the cat – Sally likes Fluffy);
- Noun phrases, nouns, determiners, count nouns, mass nouns:
* Sentence (S) – this category consists of expressions that can occur in the following
syntactic environment: Sally thinks that _______ (the cat is cute  sentence);
* Noun phrases (NP) – this category consists of personal pronouns (he, she, it, you, we,
etc.), proper names, and any other expressions that have the same distribution; The
most reliable test that we can use to check whether some constituent is a noun phrase
or not is to try to replace it with a pronoun (Fluffy was sleeping on the desk  She was
sleeping on the desk – Fluffy is a NP, BUT: The cat was sleeping on the desk  The she was
sleeping on the desk  Cat is not a NP);
* Nouns (N) – this category consists of those expressions that can combine with
determiners to their left to yield an expression of a category NP (cat, dog  the cat, the
dog);
* Determiners – a determiner is any expression that can be combined with a noun to its
right to form an expression of a category NP; Demonstrative determiners (this, that,
these, those); Possessive determiners (my, your, his, her, our, etc.); Quantificational
determiners (a, some, the, every, all, few, most, etc.);
* Count nouns – nouns that are able to be counted (e.g. one cat, five cats), and pluralized
(e.g. cat, cats);
* Mass nouns – nouns that cannot be counted and cannot (normally) be pluralized (e.g.
advice/*one advice/*advices); However, the distinction between count and mass nouns
is not usually clear-cut (e.g. He ordered two waters, though water is typically a mass
noun);
- Verb phrases (VP) – this category consists of those expressions that, when combined with a
NP on their left, will result in a sentence (S) – (e.g. Sally slept);
* Intransitive verbs – verbs that require no complement (e.g. Sally slept);
* Transitive verbs - verbs that require one (e.g. Sally liked her cat – a mono-transitive
verb) two (e.g. Sally gave her cat some treats – a ditransitive verb), or more
complements (e.g. I will trade [you] [this bicycle] [for your binoculars] – Subject, verb,
indirect object, direct object, prepositional phrase – a tritransitive verb);
* Sentential complement verbs (SV) – verbs that require a complement of a category S
to form a VP, for example, thought (e.g. Sally thought Bob liked her  Sally did so  *Sally
did so Bob liked her);
- Adverbs (Adv) – many expressions that can occur in a verb phrase as adjuncts (e.g. Sally
walked fast);
- Prepositional phrases (PP) – a kind of a verb phrase adjunct which consists of a preposition
(P) and a noun phrase (NP) – (e.g. Sally wrote the letter with a pen); Prepositions need
an argument of a category noun phrase in order to form prepositional phrases; Inside
noun phrases, prepositional phrases occur immediately to the right of the noun, and the
resulting expression has the same distribution as a noun (e.g. That bar down the street is
my favourite  That bar is my favourite – bar down the street and bar have the same
distribution (environment));
6. Phrase Structure (PS) rules:

- Phrase rules – used to capture patterns of syntactic combinations; Generative rules (how to
generate a sentence); They are similar to lexical entries (NP  {she, Fluffy, Bob, Sally, …})
except that they contain only names of syntactic categories (e.g. NP or VP, etc.); They do
not contain any linguistic form (e.g. Fluffy, Bob, etc); A phrase structure that represents
the fact that if we combine a VP with a NP to its left, we can create a sentence, appears in
S  NP VP; We can conveniently display that way that a sentence is built up from lexical
expressions using the phrase structure rules by means of a phrase structure tree:
- An example of a syntactic ambiguity in English: prepositional phrase attachment
ambiguity (The cop saw the man with the binoculars); Does the prepositional phrase refer to the
verb or to the object of the verb?

7. Dependency Syntax:
- Dependency grammars are a broad class of (mainly) syntactic formalisms which are
distinguished from the somewhat more established and widely known constituency-based
syntactic representations. In general, dependency grammars share the basic assumption “that
syntactic structure consists of lexical elements linked by binary asymmetrical relations called
dependencies”
- The idea that sentences are “wholes” organised in terms of binary governor – dependent
relations between their lexical elements were explicated in Tesniere (1959) and several other
authors including Hays (1960), Gaifman (1965), Robinson (1970), Melčuk (1988), and others.
Covington notes that on contrast to constituency grammar, whose origins can be traced to the
ancient Stoics, “dependency grammar has apparently been invented many times and in many
places”

8. Dependency Trees:
8. Dependency Syntax - we always have relations between words; a tight relationship
between words; The governor and the dependent relation; Always defines direct
relation between phrases;

- Adpositions (prepositions and postpositions);

Homework: next week no class, next: “Phraseology”

30.11.2023

1. Phraseology:
- Branch of linguistics devoted to distinct aspects and types of structural units;
- Deals with one major theoretical question about human language;
- The essence of the language is its novelty – every time we say something, it is new;
- Rote recall – remembering language from memory (Chomsky); The vast majority of sentences
we produce are novel;
- Reusing language when we have a similar situation to the one we have already had 
improving fluency and reducing ambiguity (ameliorating the chances of being understood);
- Idiomatic language – we tend to reuse idiomatic language;
- Phraseology - a branch of linguistic that is focused on identifying and classifying
phraseological units, units of prefabricated language (reused every time we use it);

- Types of phraseological units:

1. Pure Idioms – semantically opaque, we cannot deduce the meaning of a pure idiom
based on its constituents (to blow the gaff on); The meaning of the whole is impossible to
infer from the meanings of its parts;
2. Figurative idioms - To bark up the wrong tree – figurative; The meaning is
metaphorically inferred from the meanings of its components; Many conventional
(conceptual) metaphors are figurative idioms;
3. Restricted collocations – combination of two words in which one of the words has
auto-semantic (what it means in a dictionary) meaning and the other has syn-semantic
(what it means only in combination with a particular collocate) meaning/form (a
Pyrrhic victory); Cranberry – cran is only used in a word cranberry; Kith and kin – the
word kith is only used in this combination in modern English (spick and span, to and
fro); One of the constituents is restricted to occur just in a particular phrase;
4. Open collocations – a broken nose (apart from its literal meaning, it can also mean a
fractured nose);
5. Open-ended collocations – to entertain + idea, doubt, suspicion, notion (cognitive
state);

• Sentence-Long Phraseological Units:

6. Proverbs – “make hay while the sun shines”, “one swallow does not make a summer” 
culture-specific;
7. Commonplaces – things that you say in specific situations; “boys will be boys”, “wait
and see”, “it is a small world”;
8. Routine formulae – “come again?”, “mind the step”, “looking forward to seeing you”,
“hold your horses”;
9. Slogans – “value for money”, “safety first”;
10. Commandments and Maxims – “thou shalt not kill”, “do it yourself”;
11. Quotations and winged words – index quotations (attributed to a person or a
source); “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise. A Jekyll and Hyde. Catch 22”;

• Connotative meaning:
- Expressive connotations:
* Derogatory – “mutton dressed as lamb,” “to breed like rabbits”;
* Taboo – “get stuffed,” “son of a bitch”;
* Euphemistic – “the great divide,” “to live in sin,” “of a certain age”;
* Jocular/humorous – “Darby and John,” “to have a bun in the oven”;

- Stylistic connotations:
* Colloquial/informal – green fingers; every man Jack; full of beans; fine and
dandy; before you can say lack Robinson; clear off!
* Slang – reach-me-downs; to kip down; on the never-never;
* Formal – the compliments of the season; a bone of contention; gainfully
employed; to be the question; under the aegis;
* Literary – the alpha and omega; hermetically sealed; irretrievably lost; between
Scylla and Charybdis;
* Archaic – in days of yore; as it came to pass; thou shalt not kill;
* Foreign – in casu belli; sine qua non; carte blanche; comme il faut;

- Register markers:
* Astronomy – black hole; red giant;
* Economics – a high flier; idle funds; intermittent dumping;
* Judicial – burned of proof; minister without portfolio; persona non grata;
* Medical – corpus luteum; benign tumour; Caesarian section; pepper-and-salt
funds (= fundus oculi);

• Beyond sentences:
- Jokes, recipes – telling jokes using the exact same wording;
- Stories and fables – retelling the story using the same wording;
- Formulaic language in works of literature – Homer’s “Iliad” (originally an oral story 
written down – prefabricated language included);
- Poems, plays, movie scripts;

• Discourse formulas:
- Formulas (formulae):
* Pragmatic markers (“social cohesion devices): you know;
* Discourse markers (“text-linking devices”): I mean;
* Stance expressions;
* Modal particles: or something;

- Lexical bundle (mostly discourse markers?) – a piece of prefabricated language; The

difficult thing for me was the fact that… There is times when…

- Different types of phraseological units, phrase long/sentence long phraseological unit

with a strong connotative meaning – exam questions;

7.12.2023

1. Language Acquisition:

2. Acquisition Theories: a predominant theory assumes that part of our ability to acquire
language is innate and that children learn language by “inventing” the rules specific to their
language;
- Imitation Theory – inadequate;
- Reinforcement Theory – inadequate;
- Active Grammar Construction;
- Connections Theory;
- Social Interaction Theory;

3. Innateness Hypothesis: a hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed (humans

learn it as a natural part of their development without being explicitly taught) to learn
and use language; Language ability is innate to humans; Claims that babies are born
with the knowledge that languages have patterns and with the ability to seek out and
identify those patterns; Eric Lenneberg;
- Chomsky – Language Acquisition Device (LAD - part of the brain responsible for acquiring
language);
- Linguistic Universals? (Linguistic commonalities) – basic features shared by all languages
(such as nouns or verbs, pronouns); Some linguists argue that there is no a single
feature that can be found in all languages across the world;
- Universal Grammar? – the theoretically inborn set of structural characteristics shared by all
languages; If there are no common properties in all languages, there cannot be any
universal grammar;

- Lenneberg’s criteria:
1. The (linguistic) behaviour emerges before it is necessary – language is needed for
survival; Children start to speak between 1-2 years old (hence, at this early age there is
no need for survival);
2. Its appearance is not the result of a conscious decision – children do not make a
conscious choice about acquiring a native language;
3. Its emergence is not triggered by external events (though the surrounding
environment must be sufficiently “rich” for it to develop adequately) – native language is
not learnt as a result of something special triggering the learning (as opposed to playing
the piano); “Rich” environment – a child has to be exposed to the language;
4. Direct teaching and intensive practice have relatively little effect – children do not
seem to learn much if somebody points out to the mistakes they made;
5. There is a regular sequence of “milestones” (well-known stages of language
acquisition) as the behaviour develops, and these can usually be correlated with age and
other aspects of development – children master linguistic skills in a certain order;
6. There is likely to be a “critical period” for the acquisition of the behaviour;

4. The Critical Period – the term describes a period of time in an individual’s life during which
a behaviour (in this case language) must be acquired, i.e. the acquisition will fail if it is
attempted either before or after the critical period (Lenneberg); The critical period for
language acquisition – from birth to approximately the onset of puberty;
- Problematic evidence – there might be numerous variables affecting the child’s being unable
to speak after the critical period (abuse, etc);

5. Imitation Theory: claims that children learn language by listening to the speech around
them and reproducing what they hear; According to this theory, language acquisition
consists of memorising words and sentences of some language;
- Hitted? – some children might use words such as hitted instead of hit or goed instead of went;
This evidence goes against imitation theory since a child is highly unlikely to hear such
forms of words from their parents, caretakers, etc. Rather, it seems that the child who
says hitted has a rule in their internal grammar that adds -ed to a verb to make it past
tense;

6. Reinforcement Theory: asserts that children learn to speak like adults because they are
praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are
corrected when they use wrong forms; This theory is contradicted by the fact that even
when adults do try to correct a child’s grammar, the attempts usually fail entirely;

7. Active Construction of a Grammar Theory: this theory suggests that children actually
invent the rules of grammar themselves; The theory assumes that the ability to develop
rules is innate, but the actual rules are based on the speech children hear around them;
Children listen to the language around them and analyse it to determine the patterns
that exist; A symbolic approach;

8. Connectionist Theories: this theory assumes that children learn language by creating
neural connections in the brain; Through these connections, the child learns
associations between words, meanings, sound sequences, and so on; Such theories
assume that the input children receive is indeed rich enough to learn language without
an innate mechanism to invent linguistic rules; Multimodal;
- Fring – frang/frought – forming an irregular form due to the child’s exposure to words like
sing, ring, and bring; Something that is not predicted by the Active Construction of a
Grammar Theory but is predicted by the Connectionist Theory;

9. Social Interaction Theory: assumes that children acquire language through social
interactions with older children and adults in particular; Placing a great deal of
emphasis on social interaction and the kind of input that children receive, instead of
assuming that simply being exposed to language will suffice; Adults use a child-directed
speech; Simplification of language;

10. Acquisition of Sounds and Phonology:

- Sound identification (evidence) – in order to produce a spoken language, infants need to be
able to perceive it; High Amplitude Sucking (HAS); Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure
(HT);
- Sound production (evidence);

Give 1 example how evidence is connected to sound identification? – exam-like question;

High Amplitude Sucking - one of the most successful techniques used for studying the
abilities of infants up to the age of six months is called High Amplitude Sucking (HAS). In
this technique, infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound-
generating system. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants learn quickly
that their sucking produces the noise. At first, babies suck often because they are
interested in hearing the noise. They lose interest, however, in hearing the same noise
over again, and their sucking rate slows down. When this happens, the experimenter
changes the sound that the pacifier generates. If the infant sucks faster after the change,
we infer that he has recognized the change in sound and is sucking faster to hear the
interesting new sound. If the infant does not suck faster, we infer that he could not
discriminate between the two sounds.

Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure - another important technique is the Conditioned Head-

Turn Procedure (HT), usually used with infants between five and eighteen months. This
procedure has two phases: conditioning and testing. The infant sits on a parent’s lap,
watching a display and listening to sounds. During the conditioning phase, the infant
learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers. At first,
the visual reinforcers are presented at the same time as the change in sound. Then the
visual reinforcers are presented shortly after the change. The infant will begin to
anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcers and look for them before they are
activated. During the testing phase, if the infant looks to the visual reinforcers
immediately after a change in sound, we infer that the infant has perceived the change in
sound and can thus discriminate between the two sounds involved. If the infant does not
look to the visual reinforcers, we infer that he did not perceive the change and thus
cannot discriminate between the two sounds.

- Sounds in babbling, repeated babbling, variegated babbling – not a conscious process;

Scientists have suggested 2 functions that babbling serves: (1) As practice for later
speech and (2) as a social reward;
* Babbling – 4 to 6 months; Producing sequences of vowels and consonants;
* Repeated (canonical) bubbling – 7 to 10 months; It helps practice a sequence of
consonant and vowel sounds; Between 10 and 12 months of age, infants begin to
produce a variety of speech sounds, even sounds that are not part of the language the
child is acquiring natively (at this stage, babbling is no longer canonical);
* Variegated babbling – 10 and 12 months; Instead of repeating the same syllable as in
[mamamama], the infant strings together different syllables as in [bugabimo];
Give 2 examples of phonetic acquisition phenomena and the typical period when it happens –
table page 331;

- Phonology acquisition, examples of CV acquisition – since consonants and vowels are very
different sounds as regards their production, it makes them easy for babies to
pronounce this particular sequence of sounds; Very often, consonants like [l] and [r],
which share many properties of vowels and are thus difficult to distinguish from vowels,
are mastered last;

11. Morphology, syntax, word meaning:

- The holophrastic stage – one-word stage; 1 year old; The first stage of morphological
acquisition usually involves the child’s producing single words in isolation; Holophrastic
stage (a holophrase being a one-word sentence); Children at this phase of linguistic
development are limited to one word at a time in their production, but they understand
and probably intend the meaning of more than a single word;
- Two-word stage patterns – between 18 and 24 months of age; Children at this stage do not
just produce any two words in any order; Rather, they adopt a consistent set of word
orders that convey an important part of the meaning of their utterances; What is
important about this stage is that it is the basic formation of syntax and semantics;
Patterns:
* Agent + action  baby sleep;
* Action + object  kick ball;
* Action + location  sit chair;
* Entity + location  teddy bed;
* Possessor + possession  Mommy book;
* Entity + attribute  block red;
* Demonstrative + entity  this shoe;

- How is children’s speech telegraphic? – because of the omission of function words, the
speech of young children is often called telegraphic (when you send a telegram, every
word you include costs you money; Therefore, you put in only the words you really need,
and not the ones that carry no new information); The principle of economy; However,
key sematic and syntactic roles are already included;

- Plurals, negatives, interrogatives, inflection:

* Plurals – first children use the plural morpheme -s (from the other -s ending forms
such as the possessive ‘s and third-person present tense morpheme -s);
Overgeneralisation of the rule of plural formation (man  mans);
* Negatives – no in front of a sentence to negate it (no baby, no milk)  inserting a
negative word between the subject and the verb of a sentence (baby no sleep, I no drink
milk)  using something and somebody in negated sentences (I do not see something) 
replaced by nothing and nobody  anything and anybody;
* Interrogatives – using a rising intonation rather than any particular syntactic
structure (Mommy ride?)  age of 3 - the use of can, will and other auxiliary verbs in
yes/no questions and appropriate word order (are you sad?)  however, no inversion in
wh-questions (why you are sad?);
* Inflection;
Give 2 aspects of syntactic or semantic development and when they usually occur – exam-like
question;

- Word meaning: acquisition strategies:

* Complexive concepts – when a child associates different characteristics with the
meaning of a word on successive uses, thereby creating a set of objects that do not have
any particular unifying characteristics, we say that she has produced a complexive
concept; Complexive concepts serve to form a loose bond between items associated in
the child’s experience and represent a primitive conception of word meaning; For
example, a child might learn that the word doggie refers to dogs and then use it to name
other furry things, like soft slippers, and on later occasions, she may use doggie to refer
to things that move by themselves, like birds, toads, and small toy cars.
* Overextensions – when a child extends the range of a word’s meaning beyond that
typically used by adults, we say that he has produced an overextension; Definition of
moon applied consistently to pick out any round thing; Usually, the common properties
of objects included in the overextension of a word are perceptual features like shape,
size, colour, or taste;
* Underextensions – application of a word to a smaller set of objects that is appropriate
for mature adult speech (categorising whales as mammals, or olives as fruits); Children
are surprised to learn that whales are mammals, or that olives are fruits, because these
deviate so profoundly from the ordinary members of their categories.

- Relational terms, deictic expressions, verb meaning entailment:

* Relational terms – in contrast, a relational term like large or small constitutes a
relatively complex concept; The correct use of words like these requires that two things
be kept in mind: the absolute size of the object in question and its position on a scale of
similar objects.
* Deictic expressions – another difficult concept underlies deictic expressions, which
are words referring to personal, temporal, or spatial aspects of an utterance and whose
meaning depends on the context in which the word is used; For example, a speaker may
use here or this to point out objects that may be close to him, while there and that are
appropriate only when the objects are relatively far away;
* Verb meaning entailment - many verbs are conceptually more complex than most
nouns. For example, every time someone gives something, someone else takes it; and
every time someone buys an item, somebody else sells that item. Thus, every event of
giving or buying is also an event of taking or selling, respectively. However, speakers
usually do not talk about such events using both verbs. For example, people will
probably say a sentence such as Peter bought the car from Mike or Mike sold the car to
Peter, but not both sentences. So, children need to figure out that both sentences refer to
the same event without ever hearing both sentences describing the event; Some
researchers believe that verbs’ greater conceptual complexity is one of the reasons why
verbs are learned later than nouns;

12. Child-directed speech: the problem is that young children know very little about the
structure and function of the language adults use to communicate with each other. As a
result, adult speakers often modify their speech to help children understand them.
Speech directed at children is called infant-directed speech or child-directed speech.
- Attention getters - consist of names and exclamations. For example, adults often use the
child’s name at the beginning of an utterance, as in Ned, there’s a car. Or, instead of the
child’s name, adults use exclamations like Look! or Hey!
The second class of attention getters consists of modulations that adults use to
distinguish utterances addressed to young children from utterances addressed to other
listeners. One of the most noticeable is the high-pitched voice adults use for talking to
small children.
Another modulation adults use is whispering.
- Attention holders - speakers often rely on gestures as well and may touch a child’s shoulder
or cheek, for example, as they begin talking. They also use gestures to hold a child’s
attention and frequently look at and point to objects they name or describe;
- There here and now - adults talk to young children mainly about the “here and now.” They
make running commentaries on what children do, either anticipating their actions, for
example, “Build me a tower now”, said just as a child picks up a box of building blocks, or
describing what has just happened: “That’s right, pick up the blocks”, said just after a
child has done so. Adults talk about the objects children show interest in. They name
them (“That is a puppy”), describe their properties (“He is very soft and furry”), and talk
about relations between objects (“The puppy is in the basket”). In talking about the “here
and now,” usually whatever is directly under the child’s eyes, adults are very selective
about the words they use.
- Taking turns - adults respond to infants during their very first months of life as though their
burps, yawns, and blinks count as turns in conversations. Whatever the infant does is
treated as a conversational turn, even though at this stage the adult carries the entire
conversation alone.
- Making corrections - the other type of correction adults make is of a child’s pronunciation. If
a child’s version of a word sounds quite different from the adult version, a listener may
have a hard time understanding what the child is trying to say. Grammatical errors tend
to go uncorrected as long as what the child says is true and pronounced intelligibly. In
correcting children’s language, adults seem to be concerned primarily with the ability to
communicate with a listener. In each instance, the adult speaker is concerned with the
truth of what the child has said;
- Prosody – when speaking to children, adults do this in four ways: they slow down; they use
short, simple sentences; they use a higher pitch of voice; and they repeat themselves
frequently.
- How important is child-directed speech? - it seems that child-directed speech can help
children acquire certain aspects of language earlier. For example, the hearing children of
deaf parents who use only sign language sometimes have little spoken language
addressed to them by adults until they enter nursery school.
Young Dutch children who watched German television every day did not acquire any
German. There are probably at least two reasons why children seem not to acquire
language from radio or television. First, none of the speech on the radio can be matched
to a situation visible to the child, and even on television people rarely talk about things
immediately accessible to view for the audience. Children therefore receive no clues
about how to map their own ideas onto words and sentences. Second, the stream of
speech must be very hard to segment: they hear rapid speech that cannot easily be
linked to familiar situations.

13. Bilingual Language Acquisition:

- Bilingual first language acquisition - some people learn more than one language from birth
(simultaneous bilingualism) or begin learning their second language as young children
(sequential bilingualism). When children acquire two languages from birth or from
young childhood, we usually talk of bilingual first-language acquisition.
- Second language acquisition - another way of becoming bilingual is to learn a second
language not as a young child but rather later in life. This is called second-language
acquisition and is the process used, for example, by immigrants who come to a new
country as adults and have to learn the local language.
- Code switching - using more than one language in a conversation or even within a phrase;
- Fossalisation - it seems that non-native forms, as part of either the morpho-syntax or
pronunciation, can become fixed and not change, even after years of instruction. This is
called fossilization.
- Transfer and interference from L1 - a speaker’s native language also plays a role in second-
language acquisition because having learned one language influences the subsequent
learning of another language. This is called transfer. Transfer can be positive or
negative. Negative transfer is not limited to pronunciation; it may affect all levels of
second-language acquisition.

- Difference between 1 and 2nd language acquisition;

Next week: no class

15.12.2023

1. Psycholinguistics - the study of how the human mind processes language in the acquisition,
perception, storage, and production of language.
- Psycholinguistics vs. Neurolinguistics - the study of the neural and electrochemical bases of
language development and language use. The study of language and the physical brain;
* Language and the brain - the human brain governs all human activities, including the
ability to comprehend and produce language. The brain is divided into two nearly
symmetrical halves, the right and left hemispheres. Each hemisphere is further divided
into four areas of the brain called lobes. The temporal lobe is associated with the
perception and recognition of auditory stimuli; the frontal lobe is concerned with higher
thinking and language production; and the occipital lobe is associated with many
aspects of vision. The parietal lobe is least involved in language perception and
production. The two hemispheres are connected by a bundle of nerve fibres called the
corpus callosum. The brain is covered by a one-quarter-inch thick membrane called the
cortex. Most of the language centres of the brain are contained in the cortex.
* Language disorders;
* Speech production;
* Speech perception;
* Lexical access;
* Sentence processing;

2. The anatomy of language (brain map):

- The left hemisphere - the left side of the brain; The location of many language-controlling
parts of the brain for most people; receives and controls nerve input from the right half
of the body. Language is predominantly processed in the left hemisphere; Some left-
handed people might have some language-controlling parts of the brain in the right
hemisphere;
- Wernicke’s area – an older term for the Sylvian parietotemporal (SPT) area and posterior
parts of the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Is involved in converting auditory and
phonological representations into articulatory-motor representations. Comprehension
of written and spoken language;
- Broca’s area - the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (also known as Broca’s area) appears to be
responsible for organizing the articulatory patterns of language and directing the motor
cortex, which controls movement, when we want to talk (this involves the face, jaw, and
tongue in the case of spoken language, and the hands, arms, face, and body in the case of
signed language). Broca’s area also seems to control the use of inflectional morphemes,
like the plural and past tense markers, and function words, like determiners and
prepositions. Language processing and speech production;
- Lateralisation, neural plasticity - each of the brain’s hemispheres is responsible for
different cognitive functions. This specialization is referred to as lateralization.
Lateralization happens in early childhood and can be reversed in its initial stages if there
is damage to a part of the brain that is crucially involved in an important function. This
ability of the brain to adapt to damage and retrain regions is called neural plasticity.
- Contralateralisation in language production – this means that the right side of the body is
controlled by the left hemisphere, while the left side of the body is controlled by the
right hemisphere. This contralateral connection means that sensory information from
the right side of the body is received by the left hemisphere, while sensory information
from the left side of the body is received by the right hemisphere.

* Dichotic listening tasks:

- an experiment that relies on the existence of contralateralization and is designed to test the
location of language processing centres. These tests show that responses to the right-ear
stimuli are quicker and more accurate when the stimuli are verbal, while responses to the left-
ear stimuli are quicker and more accurate when the stimuli are nonverbal.
* Split-brain experiments - further evidence for the locations of the language
processing centres comes from so-called split-brain patients. In one experiment, split-
brain patients are blindfolded, and an object is placed in one of their hands. The patients
are then asked to name the object. If an object is placed in a patient’s left hand, the
patient usually cannot identify the object verbally. If, however, the object is placed in the
patient’s right hand, he or she usually can name the object. When the object is in the
patient’s left hand, sensory information from holding the object, which in this case is
tactile information, reaches the right hemisphere. Since the corpus callosum is severed,
the information cannot be transferred to the left hemisphere; because the patient is then
unable to name the object despite being able to feel what it is, we conclude that the
language centres must be in the left hemisphere. When the object is in the patient’s right
hand, however, sensory information from holding the object reaches the left
hemisphere. In this case, the patient is able to name the object; therefore, the language
centres must be in the left hemisphere.
* Hemispherectomy - hemispherectomy, an operation in which one hemisphere or part
of one hemisphere is removed from the brain, also provides evidence for the location of
the language centres. It has been found that hemispherectomies involving the left
hemisphere result in aphasia much more frequently than those involving the right
hemisphere. This indicates that the left side of the brain is used to process language in
most people, while the right side has much less to do with language processing.

3. Language disorders - conditions in which patients lose their ability to produce or

understand language due to stroke or brain injury, are known as aphasias.
- Broca’s aphasia - individuals with Broca’s aphasia, a result of damage to the inferior frontal
gyrus (IFG, also known as Broca’s area), suffer from an inability to plan the motor
sequences used in speech or sign. When they attempt to produce language, they speak
or sign haltingly and have a difficult time forming complete words. They also tend to use
telegraphic speech. For English, for example, this means that their speech lacks
morphological inflection and function words like to and the. Broca’s aphasia seems to
result in primarily expressive disorders: it is very difficult for Broca’s aphasics to
produce speech. For the most part, Broca’s aphasics do not have a problem
understanding the speech of others, although they may have some difficulty with
unusual or complex syntactic structures.
- Wernicke’s aphasia - individuals with damage to the Sylvian parietotemporal area (SPT) and
the posterior superior temporal gyrus (STG), together often known as Wernicke’s area,
exhibit a much different type of language disorder, called Wernicke’s aphasia. It is very
difficult for a patient with this problem to understand the speech of others. This often
results in the Wernicke’s aphasic misinterpreting what others say and responding in an
unexpected way. Moreover, because Wernicke’s patients have trouble selecting
appropriate words from their mental lexicon, they have a tendency to produce
semantically incoherent speech.
* Circumlocutions - Wernicke’s patients also often speak in circumlocutions, or round-
about descriptions that people use when they are unable to name the word they want.
For example, the patient may say what you drink for water and what we smell with for
nose. The syntactic order of words is also altered. I know I can say may become I know
can I say.
* Anosognosia - Wernicke’s aphasics are the most likely of the aphasic types to
experience anosognosia, the unawareness of the disturbances in their own language.
Patients with anosognosia often seem to believe that their speech is interpretable by
others when in fact it is not.
- Conduction aphasia - a third type of language disorder which is characterized by an inability
to repeat what someone has just said. These aphasics are aware of the errors in their
speech and know what words they want to say, but they often pronounce the words
incorrectly. Researchers have begun to see evidence that conduction aphasia is due to
damage in the STG (the posterior superior temporal gyrus – Wernicke’s area).
- Alexia – caused by the damage to the angular gyrus, the part of the brain that converts visual
stimuli to auditory stimuli, and vice versa. Alexia is the acquired inability to read and
comprehend written words. Patients with alexia were previously able to read, but due to
damage to the angular gyrus they can no longer accurately interpret images as linguistic
input.
- Agraphia - caused by the damage to the angular gyrus, the part of the brain that converts
visual
stimuli to auditory stimuli, and vice versa. Agraphia is the acquired inability to write
words. Interestingly, it is possible to have alexia without agraphia, so that a person can
write perfectly well but cannot read what he has just written.
- Developmental dyslexia - developmental dyslexia is a type of learning disability that makes
it difficult for people to learn to read fluently. Different in terms of cause, effect and
treatment (from alexia and agraphia);

4. Speech production - when we send messages using language, that is, when we speak or sign
the brain is involved in planning what we want to say and in instructing the muscles
used for speaking or signing. This process of sending messages is called speech
production.
- Serial models (e.g. Fromkin’s 1971) – one of the most prominent models of speech
production. One of the earliest models proposing stages for speech production.
Fromkin’s model of speech production:
1. Meaning is identified.
2. Syntactic structure is selected.
3. Intonation contour is generated.
4. Content words are inserted.
5. Function words and affixes are inserted.
6. Phonetic segments are specified.
Fromkin’s model suggests that planning an utterance progresses from meaning through the
selection of a syntactic frame to the choice of allophones. Fromkin’s model assumes that
utterance planning goes through the proposed stages in the order given. Such a model is called
serial because the different stages of the model form a series;

- Parallel models (e.g. Levelt’s 1989) - one of the most prominent models of speech
production. Assumes that the different stages involved in planning are all processed
simultaneously and influence each other. Such models are called parallel.
Levelt’s model of speech production:
1. Conceptualization - the level that corresponds to Fromkin’s 1st stage. Here the concepts of
what a speaker wants to express are generated.
2. Formulation - at this level the concepts to be expressed are mapped onto a linguistic form.
- Grammatical encoding (selection of syntactic frame and lexical items) - at the
grammatical encoding level, a syntactic structure and lexical items are selected. Thus,
this corresponds to Fromkin’s stages 2, 4, and 5.
- Phonological encoding (specification of phonetic form) - at the phonological encoding
level, the phonetic form is specified. This corresponds to Fromkin’s stages 3 and 6.
3. Articulation - the third level is the process of articulation, which involves two steps
corresponding to grammatical encoding and phonological encoding.

Levelt’s model is different from Fromkin’s model mainly in that it allows positive feedback to
occur in both directions. In other words, later stages of processing can influence earlier stages.

- Production errors - something in the production process goes wrong, that is, when we make
a production error or “slip of the tongue.” Tell us about the psychological reality of
language; Examples like these provide evidence for the psychological reality of phones,
morphemes, and words. That is, phones, morphemes, and words are part of our mental
organization of the speech wave.
* Inadvertent errors as production errors - only inadvertent errors can tell us
something about speech production. By production error we mean any inadvertent flaws
in a speaker’s use of his or her language. It is important to note that production errors are
unintentional: we say something that we did not intend to say.
* Types of production errors:
 Anticipation - occurs when a later unit is substituted for an earlier unit or
when a later unit is added earlier in an utterance (intended utterance – splicing
from one tape  actual utterance – splacing from one tape);
 Perservation - can be seen as the opposite of anticipations: occurs when an
earlier unit is substituted for a later unit or when an earlier unit is added later in
an utterance (intended utterance – splicing from one tape  actual utterance –
splicing from one type);
 Addition - involves the addition of extra units (intended utterance – spic and
span  actual utterance – spic and splan);
 Deletion – involves omission of the units (intended utterance – his immortal
soul  actual utterance – his immoral soul);
 Metathesis - is the switching of two units, each taking the place of the other
(intended utterance – fill the pool  actual utterance – fool the pill);
 Spoonerism - when a metathesis involves the first sounds of two separate
words, the error is called a spoonerism (intended utterance – dear old queen 
actual utterance – queer old dean);
 Shift - occurs when a unit is moved from one location to another (intended
utterance – she decides to hit it  actual utterance – she decide to hits it);
 Substitution - happens when one unit is replaced with another (intended
utterance – it is hot in here  actual utterance – it is cold in here);
 Blend - occurs when two words “fuse” into a single item (intended utterance –
grizzly/ghastly  actual utterance – grastly);
 Malapropism - malapropisms provide evidence that the mental lexicon is
organized in terms of sound as well as meaning. The choice of a next word is not
purely symbolic, it is also influenced by the phonetics (intended utterance –
spreading like wildfire  actual utterance – spreading like wildflowers);

5. Speech perception - the process of receiving and interpreting messages is called speech
perception. Speech perception can be seen as the reverse of speech production: in
speech production, we have an idea that we turn into an utterance, whereas in speech
perception, we hear or see an utterance and decode the idea it carries.
- Dealing with variance – lack-of-invariance problem - problem in speech perception
because no sound is ever produced exactly the same way twice.
- Speaker normalisation - taking accent into account is one example of speaker
normalisation, the way we pay attention to what we know about the person talking
when we are trying to understand what she is saying. The modification of our
expectations or judgments about linguistic input to account for what we know about the
speaker.
- Categorical vs. continuous perception - one phenomenon that helps explain how we deal
with lack of invariance is categorical perception, which occurs when equal-sized
physical differences are not equal-sized psychologically. Phenomenon by which people
perceive entities differently after learning to categorize them: differences within
categories are compressed, and differences across categories are expanded. Many
experiments suggest that categorical perception also occurs in language, particularly in
consonant perception.
If we activate the voicing up to 30 th milliseconds, almost 100% of people are able to
recognise the sound. If we do it later, the identification drops to 0%. Whether the voicing
occurs in the first 30th milliseconds or not (categorical);
- Is it inherited or developed? – for children it is more continuous (the ability to produce and
distinguish sounds, but we lose it when we grow up because we adjust our language
abilities to our needs);
- Contextual perception – how we identify individual sounds depending on the context; Cat
and cool – the sound /k/ is pronounced differently depending on the following sound -
the context influences the sound quality; This means that how we identify an individual
sound depends on its context, that is, which sounds occur before and after it;
- Rate normalisation - the modification of our expectations or judgments about linguistic
input to account for what we know about the speech rate. Listeners adjust to a person’s
speaking rate incredibly fast, often within several hundred milliseconds, and decisions
about sound categories are then based on this rate adjustment.
- The McGurk Effect - it illustrates that we rely not only on the highly variable acoustic signal
but also on visual information to perceive sounds. The McGurk effect occurs when a
video showing a person producing one sound is dubbed with a sound-recording of a
different sound. The McGurk effect illustrates that, despite considerable variability in
the acoustic and visual signals, we are able to combine both types of information to
identify speech sounds. This proves that it is a mix of auditory and visual signals that we
use for interpreting speech (we listen, we watch);
- Phoneme restoration – being able to identify a sound that was not actually produced,
because the sound fits in the context of the utterance.

6. Lexical Access - process by which we determine which word we are hearing. The words that
we know make up our mental lexicon, and in order to determine which word we are
hearing we need to filter through this imaginary dictionary in our heads to arrive at just
the word the speaker intended. Lexical access is made even more difficult due to the fact
that many words might fit into a sentence at a particular place, some words sound very
similar or even identical, and it is often not clear where one word ends and the next
begins in the spoken stream of language.
- The Full Listing Hypothesis - hypothesis that every word is stored as a separate entry in the
mental lexicon.
- Word Recognition – how we perceive somebody else’s speech;
* Resting activation - baseline level of how likely it is that a word or a phoneme will be
recognized. More frequent words are more likely to be activated, less frequent words are
less likely to be activated;
* vs. Spreading activation - activation that flows from words just accessed to other
related words, raising (or sometimes inhibiting) the resting activation of those related
words. For example, if we have just heard car, activation will spread to tire, and it will be
a little easier to recognize the word tire for hundreds of milliseconds.
* Frequency priming - one of the most important factors that affect word recognition is
how frequently a word is encountered in a language. This frequency effect describes the
additional ease with which a word is recognized because of its more frequent usage. For
example, some words (such as better or TV) occur more often than others (such as
debtor or mortgage), and words that occur more frequently are easier to access.
* vs. Recency priming - people also recognise a word faster when they have just heard
it or read it than when they have not recently encountered it; this phenomenon is known
as repetition priming.
* Cohort models - model of lexical access in which possible words in the mental lexicon
are identified based on the initial sounds of the word; impossible words are eliminated
as the auditory input progresses. A word is accessed once all other competitor words
are eliminated. We generate the initial cohort, a list of all the words we know that begin
with this sound. As more sounds are heard, words that do not match the input will be
removed from the cohort, the list of remaining possible words consistent with the
incoming sound string. At some point, possibly even before the end of the spoken word,
only one item will be left in the cohort and we will recognise it. The point where this
happens is called the uniqueness point (a point in which only one word gets activated);
Cohort – a set of words that are likely to be activated; We predict what will be said next by the
context;

7. Sentence Processing:
- Lexical ambiguity - the phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct
linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties.
- Structural ambiguity - structural ambiguity occurs when a string of words has two or more
different possible parses resulting from different possible syntactic structures.
* Temporal ambiguity – type of a structural ambiguity that is present up until some
point during the processing of a sentence but that is resolved by the end of the sentence
(because, in fact, only one of the original parses is consistent with the entire sequence of
words). Temporal ambiguity is constantly present in everyday conversations.
* The Garden Path Effect - phenomenon by which people are fooled into thinking a
sentence has a different structure than it actually does because of a temporal
ambiguity. As listeners comprehend temporarily ambiguous sentences, they sometimes
momentarily recover a meaning that was not intended by the speaker. These mistakes in
syntactic parsing are called garden path effects because the syntax of the sentence has
led the comprehender “down the garden path” (to a spot where they can go no further
and must retrace their steps). Garden path sentences are temporarily ambiguous and
initially interpreted to have a different syntactic structure than they turn out to have
(While Marry was knitting the scarf fell off her lap);
* Global ambiguity - the ambiguity is not resolved by the end of the utterance. Without
additional context (such as intonation or preceding/following sentences), there is no
way to determine what the intended structure and meaning are.

Prepositional phrase ambiguity (a classic example of global ambiguity) – The cop saw the man
with the binoculars;

18th of January – test; Open questions;

31 of January – exam; Multiple choice;

10.01.2024

Text and Corpus Linguistics:

1. Basic concepts in Text Linguistics:
- Text Linguistics – what happens beyond the level of sentences;

Coherence: Cohesion:
- It is abstract as it deals with the ideas; - It is measurable as it deals with actual
written content;
- Qualitative property; - Quantitative property;
- Coherence deals with the semantics; - Cohesion properties focus only on the
grammatical and lexical structure of
sentences;
- But coherent content is always cohesive; - The cohesive content does not need to
be always coherent;
- While topic sentences, thesis statement, the - Repeated words/ideas, reference words,
summary are the techniques used to achieve transition signals, substitution, and
coherence. ellipsis are some of the techniques which
can be used to achieve cohesion;
- Coherence mainly deals with logic and - Cohesion focuses more on lexical syntax
appropriate organization of the sentences to and grammar in sentence formation.
form meaningful and understandable content;

- Anaphora – 1. repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases,

clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetoric or poetic effect “We cannot dedicate
– we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground”. 2. Use of a grammatical
substitute (such as a pronoun or a pro-verb) to refer to the denotation of preceding
word or group of words (“Kate lives in this house. She is a lovely person”). 3. The relation
between a grammatical substitute and its antecedent;
- Cataphora – referring to something that has not yet been mentioned “Because she studied
really hard, Nancy passed her test”;

Is this sentence coherent/cohesive? – exam-like question;

2. Discourse Markers:
- Discourse markers – link 2 or more pieces of discourse (aka discourse-linking devices);
(Therefore, and so, etc);
- Pragmatic markers – used to maintain a relationship with an interlocutor (you know, yeah);
Direct influence;
- Modal Particles – lexical devices used to mark epistemic modality (or something, kind of);
Osłabianie wydźwięku tego co już zostało powiedziane;
- Link
- Link

3. Corpus Linguistics:
- An approach to studying language where the central focus is on language corpora (empirical
evidence);
- Corpus data;
- What is a linguistic corpus? – a set of (naturally-occurring) texts/speech
recordings/transcripts which is assumed to be representative of one or more genres,
registers and classes of linguistic phenomena; They are not totally random; 2 is a
minimum size of a corpus;
- Looking at a lot of language at once;
- Different corpora for spoken and written language;
- In vivo (naturally occurring)/in vitro (collected for the specific purposes)/and in silicio
(produced by language models) data (GTP-3);
- How serious are we about the corpus approach? From very serious to ignorant: corpus-
driven, corpus-based, corpus-informed, corpus-illustrated and corpus-ignorant
linguistics;
- Corpus annotation:
* Linguistic;
* Bibliographic – description of the text (author, publisher, publication date, title, etc.);
* Sociolinguistic – age, sex, education of a person, etc;
* Structural – sentences, paragraphs, etc;
- Monitor corpus – open-ended public corpus;
- Spoken corpus – transcribed recordings;
- Parallel corpus;

11.01.2024

- Spokes: conversational data search;

- Hask: collocation databases;
- Paralela;