This is the class log, updated after every class meeting. It includes topics, assignments, announcements, Web links, and (if there is enough server space) the audio demonstrations from class.

Topics: Sound change I.

Class:

• Motivation: Overview of comparative method (will do in detail next week)
  • For reconstructing proto-languages and language family trees
  • Input: Cognate sets in daughter languages
  • Hypothesis space: All possible family trees, with all possible proto-forms and all possible sound changes
  • Output: Most likely hypothesis
• One factor determining "most likely" in any particular case is how common or rare the hypothesized change is in general. Hence the O'Grady reading for today: A catalogue of common changes.
• Go over HW 9 (Paamese, Hawaiian)
  • Regular vs. sporadic change
  • Aligning proto- and descendant forms ("reflexes")
  • Conditioned vs. unconditioned changes
  • Stating changes
  • Ordering changes
• ICPs: Crowley (1977), Ch. 2, selected exercises (Bb, under "Course Documents")
• Parallels between synchronic and diachronic changes. Do the following look familiar? They should!
  • Vowel reduction (O'Grady Figure 7.2)
  • "Scale of consonantal strength" (O'Grady Figure 7.3)

Topics: Gaining words. Losing words. Changes in word meaning.

Class:

• Words entering and leaving the lexicon: What did you find?
• Categories from Algeo 1980 (article in American Speech), English words added to Barnhart Dictionary between 1963 and 1972:
  • 34% affixing
  • 30% compounding
  • 14% shifting (new meaning for existing word)
  • 10% shortening
  • 7% borrowing
  • 5% blending ("smog")
  • <1% root creation or unknown.
• Copying (borrowing, loans)
  • Reasons: utility and prestige.
  • Phonological adaptation.
  • Possible change in meaning from source language
• Words leaving the lexicon: What did you find?
• Lexical-semantic change: Word stays, meaning changes. What did you find?
  • Broadening/narrowing
  • Bifurcation
  • Shift:
    • Pejoration/amelioration
    • Under/overstatement

• Read O'Grady et al. 2005, Ch. 7, Section 2, on sound change.
• HW 9, sound change in Paamese and Hawaiian (Bb)

Topics: Reanalysis and syntactic change.

Class:

• Reanalysis within words ("folk etymology"): outrage, cutlet, female, woodchuck; also pronunciation of kindergarten
• Reanalysis across word boundaries:
  • apron, adder
  • newt, notch, nickname
• Foregoing will be demonstrated using the Oxford English Dictionary. Note "etymology" button.
• Reanalysis at the syntactic level (HO, Bb)
  • English be going to
  • Tok Pisin longen

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 7, Section 5, on lexical and semantic change.
• Find three words that entered the lexicon in three different ways, and one word that has left the lexicon. Did the meanings of these four words change over time? Use English if you like (with the OED), or any other language if you can document the word's origin with a published reference.

Topics: Language change in general. Morphological change in particular.

Class:

• Inevitability and pervasiveness of change (HO, Bb).
• Examples of recent change in English:
  • sketchy
  • begs the question
  • Uptalk (more info here)
  • Others?
• Morphological type: isolating vs. agglutinating vs. inflecting
• Cyclical changes in morphological type (HO, Bb)

Topics: Linguistic markers of social variables. Eckert 2005.

Class:

• Eckert 2005 review of modern sociolinguistics.
• "First-wave" studies
  • What do linguistic markers mark?
  • What social categories does this approach use?
• Example: Figure 1 (Labov 1966).
• Problems with first-wave approach? How come (e.g.) Martha's Vineyard doesn't fit?
• "Second-wave" studies
  • What do linguistic markers mark?
  • What social categories are used?
• What significance do the Jock/Burnout studies have?
• "Third-wave" studies
  • What do linguistic markers mark?
  • What is their relationship to non-linguistic "practices"?
• Return MT 2.

Class:

• Speech communities defined by social variables.
• Social variable: Geography. Result: Regional and local dialects.
• Lexical isoglosses: names for soft drinks
• Phonological isoglosses: The Northern Cities Shift
  • Hear it!
  • See it!
• Phonological Atlas of North America
• Social variable: Identity. Result: Orientation-based variation.
  • Case study: Martha's Vineyard (HO, Bb)
  • Keep an eye out for this in the Eckert 2005 reading.

• Big Question: How does it happen that there are so many languages?
• Gist of answer: Because there are so many speech communities. Small variations accumulate over time.
• Language varieties: idiolect--dialect--language continuum
• Language vs. dialect (technical sense)
  • Mututal intelligibility
  • Audio examples ( 1, 2, 3, 4 (gzipped) )
  • Max Weinreich learns something from a student
• Differences between dialects are just like differences between languages.
• ICPs on HO (Bb, "Course Documents"): phonology, syntax.

• For Wednesday, Nov. 11: Read O'Grady et al., Ch. 15 (Sociolinguistics), introduction and all of Section 2.
• For Friday, Nov. 13: Read Eckert 2005 article (Bb) with reading guide (Bb, "Assignments").

Topics: MIDTERM 2

Assignment for Monday, Nov. 9: none!

Topics: Nativism. Discussion of Lidz et al. 2003.

Class:

• Nativism
• The "poverty-of-the-stimulus" argument
• Lidz et al. 2003 experiment

Topics: Acquisition of syntax. Critical periods.

Class:

• Comprehension precedes production. Gerken & Macintosh 1993, English- learning 2-year-olds, MLU at most 1.5 morphemes. Picture-selection task (1 of 4),
  • "Find the bird for me" -- 86%
  • "Find bird for me" -- 75%
  • "Find was bird for me" -- 56%
  • "Find gub bird for me" -- 39%
• Syntactic production lags behind
  • Lexical categories precede functional.
  • "Allgone sock". "More wet" "Katharine sock". "It ball". "Dirty sock." "Byebye boat."
  • Two-word combinations represent simple relations like object+location, possessor+object, object+attribute, etc.
  • Functional structure develops slowly.
  • Word-order rules almost never violated.
  • Agreement and case morphology early (age 2).
• HO: "Critical periods"

Topics: Acquisition of morphology. Overregularization.

Class:

• Child morphology: Acquired relatively fast and accurately (exx. from Turkish and Navajo, on Bb)
• HO: Overregularization (Bb)
• Reading guide for Lidz et al. 2003 paper (Bb, under "Assignments")
• Syllabus for MT 2 (Bb, under "Course Documents" for today)

• For Monday, Nov. 2: Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 11, Sections 5 and 6 (on syntactic acquisition and nativism)
• For Wednesday, Nov. 4: Read Lidz et al. 2003 paper (Bb, under "Assignments")
• For Friday, Nov. 6: Prepare for Midterm 2.

Topics: First-language acquisition. Child phonology.

Class:

• L1 acquisition in general. Claims:
  • Children acquire a grammar (a theory about how their L1 works).
  • The get help doing this, not from adults, but from their own brains.
• Main stages in learning to talk (audio examples here):
  • cooing (1-4 months)
  • canoncial babbling (5-10 months)
  • first words (10-15 months)
  • two-word utterances (18-24 months)
• Phones and syllables acquired in increasing order of complexity. Adult targets are "repaired" to fit child's system. (Like loanword adaptation.)
• HO: "Child phonology" (Bb). Evidence for rules:
  • Phonologically systematic (uses natural classes, etc.)
  • "Across-the-board" changes

Topics: X-bar structure in Japanese. Binding theory.

Class:

• HW 7: X-bar structure in Japanese. What is the simplest and most general way to express the difference?
• Syntax-semantics interaction: Interpretation of pronouns. Two kinds:
  • Pronominals (I, you, she, ...)
  • Reflexives (myself, herself, themselves, ...)
• "Binding principles":
  • Principle A: A reflexive has to have ("be bound by") a c-commanding NP antecedent in same minimal IP.
  • Principle B: A pronominal must not have such an antecedent.
• Examples:
  • Bruce's dislike of himself is pathological.
  • The lawyer for Sheila defended herself.
  • Cynthia says that she/*herself impresses Sheila.
  • The haberdasher showed Bruce himself in the mirror.
  • Blocking of passivization: Sheila saw Bruce vs. Sheila saw herself.
• Counterexamples (time permitting; for more, see D. J. Napoli, Syntax: theory and problems, Ch. 10):
  • Sheila brought Bruce with her.
  • Sheila believes Bruce's description of herself.
  • Sheila considers Bruce inferior to/*fond of herself.
• ICP: Japanese zibunzisin (Carnie 2002, Ch. 4, Ex. 2) (Bb)

Class:

• Meaning of simple predicates like red, mammal, etc.; distinction from last time between
  • Extension (set membership in real world)
  • Intension (conditions for belonging to set)
• Meaning of sentences: Same thing applies
  • Extension (truth value in real world)
  • Intension (truth conditions)
• Problem: Given the meanings of morphemes in the lexicon, and a knowledge of syntax, what more do we need in order to compute the meaning of a sentence?
• HO: "Syntax and Semantics" (Bb)

Announcement: Midterm 2 will be 11/6 (F).

Topics: Semantic knowledge. Entailment. Extension and intension. Morpheme meaning: features vs. prototypes.

Class:

• Compositionality of semantics. (Refer back to "Nutshell" HO, Sept. 23.)
• Semantic knowledge vs. real-world knowledge. Entailment examples.
• Morpheme meaning ("mental definitions")
  • Mental images.
  • Extension (denotation, reference).
  • Intension (with an s) (sense).
• Representing intensions:
  • Semantic features
  • Category prototypes (discussed in Ch. 6, Section 2.1)
• Utility of features:
  • Entailment relations ("poodle"/"dog")
  • Subcategorization (They opened me a beer/*They opened me the door)
  • Graceful scaling ("non-mammals", "things to save in a fire")

Topics: Movement and parametric variation. MT 1.

Class:

• English Y/N question formation ("inversion"): I moves to C if C is "+Q". Evidence:
  • *He asked we would return.
  • He asked would we return.
  • He asked whether we would return.
  • *He asked whether would we return.
• do-support
• Ways for languages to differ syntactically:
  • Different assignment of meanings to categories (e.g., A vs. N)
  • Different Merge process (e.g., complements follow vs. precede heads)
  • Different Move process (e.g., different things trigger movement, different positions moved between)
• Example: Verb raising in French (HO on Bb, accompanies O'Grady et al. discussion)
• MT 1 discussion.

Topics: Clausal complements. CP and movement.

Class:

• Finish off sheep problem.
• Return HW 6. Discuss clausal complements and CP.
  • CP fits X-bar schema (head/complement/specifier)
  • Recursion and embedding
• Move; deep vs. surface structure.
• HO: "Evidence for movement" (Bb)

Topics: Modifiers. Structural ambiguity in syntax.

Class:

• Verbs with two complements.
• Modifiers:
  • Can have lots in same XP (no unique reserved spot)
  • Not subcategorized for
  • Order (usually) doesn't matter
  • Attach to X' (higher than complement, lower than specifier)
• Semantic interpretation guided by morphological and syntactic structure. ==> Structural ambiguity possible.
• HW 5
  • IP examples
  • Complement or modifier?
  • CPs, recursion, and embedding. (Is embedding universal?) (Really?)
  • Sentence-level vs. VP-level modifiers.

Topics: X-bar theory: heads, complements, specifiers, and modifiers.

Class:

• Goal: Model of syntactic abilities, accounting for spontaneous production and grammaticality judgments.
• Need: Account of nested constituent structure.
• Solution: X-bar theory. (WARNING: We will be working with a highly simplified version of the real theory.)
• X-bar schema: The basics
  • Heads (X = N, V, A, P, I, C, ...)
  • Complements (sibling to head)
  • Specifiers (child of XP)
• ICP: Examples from O'Grady et al., Ex. 4, p. 195.
• Evidence for basic X-bar structure
  • Constituency (one, do so ))
  • Selectional restrictions ("subcategorization"): e.g., verbs like sleep, lack, pride, etc.
  • Intrusion of modifiers (*bottle in the fridge of beer)

• Do (to hand in) O'Grady exercises 2bde, 5a-j, 9bc.
• Ponder to (discuss) he following sentence: A competent shepherd can shear a whole flock of sheep in a few hours.
  • Where in the sentence can you insert each of the following two modifiers without making it ungrammatical? certainly, completely
  • Does X-bar theory have anything to say about the positions in which each word is acceptable? If so, what?

Topics: Syntax basics.

Class:

• Goal: Model of syntactic abilities.
• Data it's meant to explain: Grammaticality judgments. (HO, Bb, illustrating "ungrammatical") and natural production.
• Crucially dependent on internal structure of sentences ("constituency")
• Some tests for constituency in English (use with care)
  • Substitution with pronoun, etc.
  • Movement (various kinds)
  • Coordination
  • Deletion (not in O'Grady)
• Examples on blackboard (the real one)

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 5 Section 2, on "Complement options"
• Read the online section on modifiers
• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 6 (six), Section 3.2, on "Structural ambiguity"

Topics: MIDTERM 1

Assignment for Wednesday, October 7: Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 5, Section 1 (whole thing).

Topics: Infixation and reduplication.

Class:

• HW 5. (Rule should say obstruents, not "consonants".)
• HO: Reduplication
  • Tagalog problem (M. Landmann)
  • Sanskrit reduplication. Can you predict the reduplicant?
• (Time permitting:) HO: Palauan nouns (Schane/Bendixen).
  • Underlying representations?
  • Rules?
  • Ordering?
• Questions on midterm (which is Monday)?

• Business from 5-6.
• "Linguistically-related games" from 6 on.
• Supper will be ordered out for.

Topics: Allomorphy, morphophonemics, and the abstractness of underlying representations.

Class:

• Florentine Italian from HW 5
  • Morpheme pronunciation "alternates" depending on environment
  • => Allophony rule is productive
  • Only one underlying (here = phonemic) representation needed for each morpheme
• Russian from HW 5
  • Neutralization, a morphophonological (not allophonic) rule.
  • Ordering paradox (morphology/phonology)
  • Solution: Abstract underlying representation (here, not same as phonemic)
• Questions re midterm?

Assignment for next time: Review O'Grady et al., pp. 116-117, on infixes, and p. 132, on reduplication.

Announcement: UNDERLING meeting in Dey 304 on Friday.

• Business from 5-6.
• "Linguistically-related games" from 6 on.
• Supper will be ordered out for.

Topics: Internal structure of words.

Class:

• HO: Internal structure and compositional semantics (handed out last time)
• Example: English derivational morphology
  • Derivational morphemes select a particular base category and yield a particular derived category (e.g., -ness is Adj--\>N)
  • Induces morphological tree structure within word.
  • Semantics follows tree structure.
  • Evidence: Structural ambiguity (more than one tree --\> more than one interpretation)
• Derivation vs. inflection
• Compounds; endo- vs. exocentricity.
• Start on HW 5.

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 4, Sections 5 (other morphological processes) and 6 (morphophonemics)
• Do HW 5, on morphophonemic alternations (Bb).
• Look over Midterm 1 syllabus (Bb, under "Course Documents") and bring questions next time.

Topics: Words and lexical categories.

Class:

• HO: What is a word? Morphosyntactic and phonological tests for word-hood.
• Lexical categories (N, V, Adj, etc.). Morphosyntactic tests for category membership (HO).
• Internal morphological structure of words and compositional semantics (HO for next time)

Announcement: UNDERLING events today and tomorrow:

• Friday, 9/25, 6 p.m., Dey 304: "Linguistics and the media"
• Saturday, 9/26, 5 p.m., Artichoke Basil Pizza (Franklin St.), dinner with linguists

Topics: Morphemes, and how to identify them.

Class:

• Revisit the "Language in a nutshell" HO (Bb): Morphemes as minimal units of sound-meaning correspondence
• Discuss HW 4, Swahili verb morphology
• Properties of morphemes:
  • Lexical vs. grammatical ("functional"); open vs. closed classes
  • Free vs. bound
  • Roots vs. affixes
  • Productivity
• ICP: Exercise 1, p. 142. For each proposed bound morpheme, prove it by citing other words which share that sound and meaning.

• HO: What is a word? Examples from Dyirbal and English.
• Chapter 5, Section 1.1, on lexical categories (replaces discussion at top of p. 115, which is misleading)
• Chapter 4, rest of Section 1 and through end of Section 2.

Topics: Knowledge of language, language universals, Universal Grammar, and other issues raised by Berent et al. 2008.

Class:

• Berent et al. 2008 discussion
  • Linguistic universals
  • Universal vs. language-particular knowledge
  • Innate vs. acquired knowledge
  • Sonority, and cluster phonotactics
  • Perceptual effects of L1 phonotactics
  • Why Korean?
  • Predictions and experiments
  • Conclusions
• Begin HW 4 (Swahili verbs)

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 4, pp. 111-113, and Ch. 4, Appendix (pp. 140-142).
• Do HW 4 (Swahili verb morphology)

Topics: Syllables, syllabification, and syllable-based phonotactics.

Class:

• Finish up diphthongiation/flapping ICP from last time.
  • Allophony (aI/a:)
  • Neutralizing rule (flapping)
  • Interaction: Order
  • (What about, e.g., psych [aI] vs. ps[a:]chology?)
• Concepts that will be needed for the Berent et al. reading: onsets, phonotactics, epenthesis, sonority.
• Discuss Maori loan adaptation thought problem.
  • Natural classes
  • Syllabification: Nucleus Rule, Onset Rule, Coda Rule.
  • Phonotactics

Topics: Distributions and phonological rules.

Class:

• Phoneme as set of non-contrasting phones. Phoneme as set of variants of a basic allophone.
• Go over HW 3 (Modern Greek).
• Lexicon/grammar distinction (= unpredictable/predictable).
• Formulating allophony rules. Importance of natural classes.
• Phonological rules that are not allophony rules.
• ICP: "Southern Glide Weakening" and flapping. What else is going on here?

• For Friday, Sept. 18:
  • Read O'Grady et al. 2005, Section 5 (whole thing) on syllables.
  • Ponder the Maori/English loan adaptation data set (Bb, "Assignments")
• For Monday, Sept 21: Read Berent et al. 2008 (Bb, "Assignments"), with Reading Guide (also Bb, "Assignments").

Topics: Complementary distribution and allophony.

Class:

• English vs. Thai aspiration. (Audio on Bb.)
• Hindi thought problem from O'Grady et al.
• Mokilese thought problem from O'Grady et al.
• Use of "T-diagrams" for finding environments.
• Importance of phonetic properties in phonological distributions. Natural classes.
• ICP: Ganda liquids (van de Weijer 1995)
• Return and discuss HW 2

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 3, Sections 4.1 and all of Section 6.
• HW 3 (Modern Greek, Bb)

Topics: Phones and phonemes. Distribution and contrast.

Class:

• Examples on HO from last time ("Differences that make a difference")
• Phonetic and phonemic inventory. Ex.: #1, English fricatives.
• Restrictions on distribution. Exx.: #1 ([h]), #2 (clusters).
• Contrast vs. allophony:
  • Ewe [b] vs. [B] (audio from UCLA Ladefoged archive)
  • Spanish [b] vs. [B] (#3 on handout; audio from UNC faculty, Smith/Mora-Marin)

• Reread O'Grady et al.'s discussion of English [ph]/[p]/[b]
• Read the Appendix to O'Grady et al. Ch. 3 (pp. 99-100)
• Think about Exercises 2 and 3 on p. 102, and come to class on Monday ready to discuss them.

Topics: Vowel properties. What is phonology?

Class:

• Go over HW 2 (NZ English)
  • Check transcriptions.
  • Differences between the two dialects.
  • IPA details: schwa vs. wedge. Conventions for writing English diphthongs.
  • Is one of the two pronunciations (NZ or US) "more correct"?
• HO: Phonological contrast: Differences that make a difference (handout and audio examples are on Bb)

• Read O'Grady et al., Ch. 3, Sections 2 and 3.
• Ponder the ``Differences that make a difference'' handout, and listen to the sound files (Bb, "Course Documents: 9/9")

Topics: Vowel articulations and IPA symbols.

Class:

• Go over HW 1 (place, manner; IPA symbols)
• Aspiration
  • English b/ph/sp (see O'Grady et al., Section 5.5)
  • Comparison of American English and Castilian Spanish (JIPA)
• Broad vs. narrow transcription (for more information, see "For the Student Linguist" on pp. 55-56 of O'Grady et al., and this site at U. Manitoba)
• Vowel parameters (sound files are on Blackboard, under "Course Documents")
  • height (high/mid/low is also called open/mid/close)
  • backness
  • rounding
  • MRI video of vowel articulations (Ladefoged, UCLA)
• Practice comparing vowel pairs (Ibibio, Zapotec, Hasselt German, from JIPA)
• IPA symbols for English vowels and diphthongs. We'll stick to the book's conventions (e.g., [aj], not [aI] or [ai]).
• In-class practice: Begin HW 2

• Do HW 2, on U.S. and N.Z. English (on Blackboard)
• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 2, Section 8, on suprasegmentals (tone, stress, length). Examples can be heard here (Ladefoged, UCLA)
• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 3, through end of Section 1, on phonology.

Topics: Consonant articulations and IPA symbols: First English, then non-English.

Class:

• Three main parameters for consonants: Voicing (etc.), place of articulation, manner of articulation. (See IPA chart (York U.).)
• Last time: Voicing, some place.
• Finish finding places of articulation (mirror exercises (UNC), sagittal section (U. of Manitoba))
• Manner of articulation:
  • Non-approximants, illustrated with interactive sagittal section (U. Toronto):
    • Oral stops
    • Fricatives
    • Affricates (not "affricatives"!)
    • Nasal stops (Ken's soggy net again)
  • Approximants
    • Liquids
      • Laterals
      • Rhotics (X-rays from Delattre & Freeman, 1968)
    • Glides
• Using parametric description to generalize to non-English sounds
• What do these informal descriptions really mean?

• O'Grady et al. Ch. 2, Exercises 5, 6, 7, and 9acdfhij. Try to describe each group so as to exclude all of the other English sounds.
• Read O'Grady et al. Sections 2.6 and 2.7. There's a mistake in Figure 2.9; [oj] should be circled.
• Bring mirrors again!

Topics: Speech as SOUNDS NOT LETTERS. IPA; what it's for and how it works. Overview of vocal-tract anatomy.

Class:

• Speech as SOUNDS NOT LETTERS!
  • X-ray movie of speech (Queen's Univ.)
  • Audio examples from Mambay (Int'l Phonetic Assn.)
  • English audio examples.
• International Phonetic Alphabet
  • Official website
  • Talking IPA charts from U. of Victoria, York U., and UCLA.
  • Freeware IPA font (Summer Inst. of Linguistics)
• Vocal-tract anatomy
  • Larynx atop trachea
  • Larynx in throat and an explanation of phonation
  • Video of descent from nose to larynx
  • Sagittal section of vocal tract (U. of Manitoba)
  • Some low-tech ways to observe your articulators

Assignment for Wednesday, Sept. 2:

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 2, Section 5
• Bring mirrors again

Topics: Structure of language. Mental grammar and descriptive grammar. The lexicon. Language as an instinct.

Class:

• Mental vs. descriptive grammar.
• Structure of language:
  • (Mental) grammar, including
    • Phonetics
    • Phonology
    • Morphology
    • Syntax
    • Semantics
  • (Mental) lexicon
• Examples from your (descriptive) grammars.
• Conclusions about
  • How languages differ
  • How they don't differ
• Pinker and O'Grady readings:
  • Productivity (creativity) -- What is it? How possible? (Chomsky)
  • Talking vs. brewing, baking, and writing (Darwin)?
  • Language "not a cultural artifact" (Pinker)?
  • Universal Grammar (Chomsky)?

• Read O'Grady et al. 2005, Ch. 2, Sections 1-4.
• Bring a hand mirror to class (all next week).

Topics: Course organization. What is linguistics? An example.

Class:

• Go over syllabus.
• Example of linguistics: English tag questions (Bb).
• HO: Course preview (Bb).

• Read Pinker 1994, Ch. 1 (Bb)
• Read O'Grady et al 2005, Ch 1.
• From Davis Library, borrow a descriptive grammar of a language you have never heard of (it should have a title like A Grammar of ... -- the PL and PM sections abound in these). Email me the title and author of the book by 11 o'clock on Friday. For each entry of Table 1.3, try to find one such fact in the grammar book. Bring books to class on Friday for discussion.