Where am I?

o Course: HUL242-Fundamentals of Language Sciences

o Week 1: Lecture-1, Introduction
o Thursday, January 2nd
 About this course

➢ This is not an easy course. There is a lot of technical material

to master.
➢ Everything will be fine if you do not miss classes and do the
assigned readings.
➢ Consistent and regular work is required.
 Tutorials

o Date & Time:

➢ Wednesday, 1-2 pm, & 2-3 pm
o Place:
➢ LH 604

o Note:
➢ Only two slots with a room with 60 seating capacity
➢ We will be assigned more TAs
➢ Finalize it by the next week.
 Office Hours

➢ Monday and Thursday, 3:30 pm -4:30 pm

➢ Also, by an appointment: [email protected]
➢ Room: MS-620
5th floor, MS Building.
Humanities and Social Sciences Department (HSS)
“Linguistics”?

➢ Linguistics is the scientific study of human language.

 “Science”?

o Richard Feynman, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics

in 1965, describes the scientific method
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw

o Science is:
➢ Data
➢ Hypothesis
➢ Consequences
Linguistics as a Science: Yes-no question in English

1. John is talking to a boy. Is John talking to a boy?

2. John is talking to the boy who is tall . Is John talking to the boy who is tall ?

3. The boy who is tall is talking to John. Is the boy who is tall talking to John?

o Data -> systematic observation of the data -> hypothesis -> experiment/testing
on more data -> if disagreement, then reformulation of the hypothesis ->
experiment/testing on more data -> if agreement, then rule/principle, theory.

o The scientific process is iterative, with results contributing to further refinement of

theories and hypotheses.
 “Human language”?

o What do you know when you know a language?

o 5 areas of competence
➢ Sounds
➢ How to put those sounds together
➢ Words
➢ How to put words together to make a
phrase/sentence
➢ Meaning
Human Language Competence and Linguistics

o 5 core subfields of linguistics

➢ Phonetics: the study of sounds
➢ Phonology: the study of sound patterns
➢ Morphology: the study of word formation
➢ Syntax: the study of sentence structure
➢ Semantics: the study of meaning
 Other subfields we will not get into
o Sociolinguistics -How people use languages in specific
social contexts.
o Historical linguistics- How languages change over time.
o Computational linguistics/Natural Language
Processing - How to model different aspects of language
with statistical and computational models.
o Neurolinguistics- how language lives in the brain.
o Psycholinguistics- psychology + linguistics; how language
is processed on-line
o Applied fields- speech pathology, education-language
teaching and learning and many more
Languages are structured: Morphology

o Forming plural in English

➢ cat -> cat-s
➢ dog -> dog-s

o Descriptive rule
➢ Root + plural suffix (s)

o Can the plural marker come before the word?

➢ No. *s+cat, *s+dog

o Asterisks is used to show “unacceptable”, “ungrammatical” constructions.

Languages are structured: Morphology

o Institute, -ion, -al, -ize, -ed

o Outcome
➢ Institutionalized
➢ *Institut(e)-al-ion-iz-ed
➢ *Institutet(e)-ion-iz-al-ed
➢ *Institut(e)-ion-al-ed-iz

o Morphemes are attached one before another, depending

on its function
Hierarchical structure
“unbuttonable”

o What does ‘un-button-able’ mean?

o It’s ambiguous:
➢ Can be unbuttoned
➢ Cannot be buttoned

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Hierarchical structure: Two possible analysis
o Un-button-able has two valid structure

(a) Adj (b) Adj

un- Adj V -able

V -able un- V
button button

o The prefix un- can be attached to Adj (as in left structure) or Verb
(as in right structure).

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Languages are structured: Syntax
o Noun phrases in English:
➢ Two old men
*old two men
*men two old
*men old two
➢ Correct order: Numeral -> Adjective ->Noun

o Sentences in English
➢ JohnSub sawverb MaryObj
*JohnSub MaryObj sawverb
➢ Correct order: Subject -> Verb -> Object
Languages are structured: Syntax

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Ambiguity

o Stop for pedestrians in crosswalk.

o Stop for pedestrians in crosswalk.

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 Ambiguity

o Don’t worry about the tree yet. Don’t take it as official either (They’re
for illustration). This is where we will be headed. 18
Phonetics and Phonology
o We have intuitions about the sounds in our language.
o We can divide the sounds into consonants and vowels, for example.
➢ Three different sounds in “put”; two are consonants and one is
vowel.
o Is the vowel in “put” the same as in “but”?
➢ No!
o Is the first vowel sound in “women” the same as in “fin”?
➢ Yes!
Languages are structured: Phonetics and Phonology

o Word-initial two consonant cluster in English.

➢ Clasp /klæsp/– a word in English
➢ Clisp /klisp/– a “possible word” in English
➢ *Lkisp /lkisp/ – an “impossible word” in English

o The descriptive rule (i.e., generalization):

➢ The sequence of sounds “lk” cannot occur at the beginning of a
word in English.
Languages are structured: Phonetics and Phonology

o Word-initial three consonant cluster

➢ Spring / sprɪŋ/
➢ *Srping /srpiŋ/

o The descriptive rule: the sequence of sounds “srp” cannot occur

at the beginning of a word in English.

o But not all languages are so fussy. And some are more fussy! –Have
you notice my pronunciation of the word “Spring”?
Cross-linguistic facts
o An example from Hindi

Isko chhotaa chhotaa kaato actual sentence

this small small cut word by word *gloss*
"Cut this into very small pieces." translation into English

o How different from English?

➢ The object comes before the verb. English does not allow this word
order: (S)OV vs. (S)VO

➢ Intensificational meaning: An adjective can be reduplicated instead

of modifying the adjective with another adjective.
Cross-linguistic facts

o Hindi morphology and syntax are not similar to English

They are different from those of English.

o A linguist’s task
➢ to determine what the rules in the two languages are
such that a child learning English or Hindi learns that
language with equal ease.
Cross-linguistic facts: Universal Grammar (UG)
o How does a child learn a language (their native language) so easily and
so quickly without instruction?

o Noam Chomsky
➢ Human must have underlying principles that help them to acquire a
language easily and quickly.

➢ Humans are born with an innate ability to acquire languages and that
there are universal principles/rules that form the basis for language
acquisition across different cultures and languages.

➢ UG provides a sort of language template in our brains, making it

easier for us to grasp the grammar of the specific language we are
learning.
Next class

o We will start with Phonetics.

o Reading
➢ O’Grady, Williams, et al. (2010). Phonetics, in Contemporary
Linguistics. 6th edition. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
(required)