PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

Some basic linguistic theorypart2

Levels of analysis

Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics

phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

medium of

transmission

meaning

(semantics)

grammar

language

structure usepragmatics

Morphology Language differences

Isolating languages: no endings, just word order (e.g., Chinese & Vietnamese)

Inflecting: lots of inflections (e.g., Latin & Greek) In Classic Greek every verb has 350 forms

Agglutinating languages (e.g., Turkish, Finnish, Eskimo)

Eskimo: angyaghllangyugtuq = he wants to acquire a big boatAngya- ‘boat’; -ghlla- ‘augmentative meaning’; -ng- ‘acquire’; -

yug- ‘expresses desire’; -tuq- third person singular

Psychological reality of Morphology

Speech errors Stranding errors: The free morpheme typically moves,

but the bound morpheme stays in the same location

they are Turking talkish (talking Turkish) you have to square it facely (face it squarely)

Morpheme substitutions a timeful remark    (timely) Where's the fire distinguisher?    (Where's the fire

extinguisher?)

Morpheme shift I haven't satten down and writ__ it    (I haven't sat down and written

it) what that add__ ups to    (adds up to)

Psychological reality of Morphology

Wug test (Gleason, 1958)

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Here is a wug.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.QuickTime™ and a

TIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Now there are two of them.

There are two _______.

Levels of analysis

Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics

phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

medium of

transmission

meaning

(semantics)

grammar

language

structure usepragmatics

Syntax: the ordering of the words A dog bites a man.

Syntax: the ordering of the words A dog bites a man. A man bites a dog.

• Same words, but different word order leads to a radically different interpretation

Syntax: the ordering of the words A dog bites a man. A man bites a dog. A dog was bitten by a

man.

• Not just the linear ordering • It is the underlying set of syntactic rules

man

S

VP

doga

NP

bites

Va

NP

man

S

VP

doga

NP

bites

V

a

NP

Object position

Subject position

Syntax: the ordering of the words• The underlying structural position, rather than surface linear position matters.

Syntactic Ambiguity The same linear order (surface structure) may

be ambiguous with respect to the underlying structure

Good shot How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know

– Groucho Marx shot an elephant in his pajamas

Syntactic Ambiguity

VP

V PPNP

P NP

shot an elephant in my pajamas

VP

V

PP

P NP

shot

NP

an elephant in my pajamas

NP

Generative Grammar The pieces:

– Grammatical features of words• Dog: Noun

• Bite: Verb

– Phrase structure rules - these tell us how to build legal structures

• S --> NP VP(a sentence consists of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase)

• VP --> V (NP)

• NP --> (A) (ADJ) N

Generative Grammar

Recursion: you can embed structures within structures

NP --> (A) (ADJ) N (PP) PP --> Prep NP

So we NP’s can be embedded within PP’s which in turn may be embedded within NP’s.

The dog with the bone of the dinosaur from the cave with the paintings of the animals with fur bit the man.

The result is an infinite number of syntactic structures from a finite set of pieces

Chomsky’s Linguistics Chomsky proposed that grammars could be

evaluated at three levels: Observational adequacy

Must be able to predict acceptable and unacceptable sentences Descriptive adequacy

Explain how sentences with similar meanings are related (e.g., active and passive sentences)

Explanatory adequacy Must be able to explain how languages are acquired and the

similarities and differences across languages (language universals)

Transformational grammar Chomsky (1957, 1965)

Two stages phrase structures for a sentence Build Deep Structure

One constituent at a time Build from phrase structure rules

Convert to Surface Structure Built from transformations that operate on the deep structure Adding, deleting, moving Operate on entire strings of constituents

Transformational grammar

LexiconLexical

insertion rules

Transformational component

Semantic component

Surface structures

Deep structures

Semantic structures

Phrase structure rules

Transformational grammar 2 deep structures, 1 surface structure:

Groucho Marx shot an elephant in pajamas

1 deep structure, 2 surface structures: Active/passive sentences:

The man bit the dog. The dog was bitten by the man.

Transformational grammar

in the garage

S

NP VP

NPVP PP

Deep structure Surface structure

The car

was put (trace)

NP VP

NPVP PP

S

in the garagethe carwas put

Movement transformation

Psychological reality of syntax Derivational theory of complexity

The more transformations, the more complex The boy was bitten by the wolf The boy was bitten. (involves deletion) No evidence for more processing of the second sentence

Evidence for (trace) Some recent evidence or reactivation of moved constituent at

the trace position

Evidence for syntax Syntactic priming

semantics Word level

Network models Polysemy

Sentence level Propositions

Pragmatics