Lecture II Basic Concepts

2.1 The Nature of Grammar

Grammar: A comprehensive description of the

structures of a language

Two Classes of grammar:

• Actual grammars: limitations of authors

• Theoretical grammar: exhuastive in coverage, fully explicit, psychologically accurate; no such grammar exist

Or: The psychological representation of a

linguistic system

More specifically: Those aspects of cognitive

organization in which resides a speaker’s

grasp of established linguistic convention.

Charactherised by : A structured inventory of

conventional linguistic units

2.1.1 UnitsUnit: a structure a speaker has mastered quite thoroughly, to the extent that he can employ it inlargely automatic fashion, without having to focus his attention specifically on its individual parts or their arrangement.(a prepackaged as-sembly)It is effectively simple , it demands no cons-tructive effort for the creation of novel structures.

• Units in phonology: basic sounds phonological structures larger than segments (syllbalbes, words, phrases, sequences)• Units in semantics: established concepts dragon, parliament (a familiar gestalt)• Symbolic units: the symbolic association between a

semantic and a phonological unit. (deployed in CG for the representation of both lexical

and grammatical structure)

• Grammatical patterns: schematic symbolic units, differring only in degree of specificity

• Symbolic units provide the means for ex-pressing ideas in linguistic form. No sub-stantial con structive effort is required if the idea to be ex-pressed happens to coincide with the semantic structure of a conventional sym-bolic unit; the semantic structure automatically calls the phonological structure to mind, and conversely, since the symbolic relation between them has unit status.

2.1.2 Linguistic Units

The linguistic character of a unit is sometimes a

matter of degree.

Linguistic units include both semantic and pho-

nological structures

Only symbolic units or parts of such units quali-

fy as linguistic units

2.1.3 Conventional linguistic units

The grammar of a language is a characterization

of established linguistic convention.

Four features• Semantic units are characterized relative to cognitive

domains• Semantics are encyclopedic in nature• Language is often self-referential• Units are aquired through a process of decontext-

ualization

2.1.4 A structured inventory of conventional linguistic unitsInventory: the nonconstructive nature of grammar

not meaning the units in a grammar

are discrete and unrelated.

Structured: some units function as components of

others

E.g: [[d]-[ɔ]-[g]]

[[DOG]/ [[d]-[ɔ]-[g]]]

Three basic kinds of relations between the com-

ponents of a complex structure.

Symbolization: correspondence between a seman-

tic structure and a phonological structure.

Categorization: schematicity

Integration: two or more structures in a given do-

main-----semantic,phonological, or symbolic-----

combine to form a composite structure of greater

size. E.g: [[DOG]/ [[dɔɡ]] and [[PL]/[z]]

2.2 Schema and Instance

Schema

• Concepts abstracted from instances

• Can either be relational or nonrelational

Relational (next figure)

Nonrelational: [ANIMAL] [THING] [MOVE]

Relationship between and abstraction and instance

[A](schema)

[B](instance) [C](instance)

/p/

[ph] [p] [p┐]

[ORAL STOP]

[VOICELESS] [VOICED]

[LABIAL][CORONAL][VELAR] [LABIAL][CORONAL][VELAR]

[p] [t] [k] [b] [d] [g]

2.3 Schema and instance in symbolic unitsWords and word classes

tree : a symbolic unit

[tri:] (phonological structure)

[TREE] (semantic structure)

Schema: [WORD]

Instances:[NOUN],[VERB],[ADJECTIVE]

Schema:[NOUN]

Instances: TREE [tri:]

DOG [dɔɡ]

Criteria for word classes

Distribution: syntactic and morphological

behavior

earthequake

Note:

book on the table: not purely syntactic

Inadequacy: Circular

Semantics:

Jackendoff:

one should attempt to explain formal properties

in semantic terms.

Three levels: phonological, semantic, and

syntactic aspects. Words are represented by their

Phonological form and their semantic content,

and also by a stipulation of their lexical category

Givón and the prototype approach

Givón(1984): the referents of nouns and verbs

tend to differ with respect to their time stability .

Nouns: stay relatively stable over time.

Verbs: denoting rapid changes

Adjectives: the middle of the time-stability scale

Inadequacies: some aspects can’t be explained

(nominalization, 汉语中的兼类词 )

A combination of distribution and symbolic aspects

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe’

Gyre and gimble are verbs according to their dis-

tribution,they are nonsense words. Yet once we

have determined their status as verbs, we do

have some vague idea of what their meanings

would be

2.3 Meaning: Profile, base, and domain

Three General approaches to meaning:• The language-world approach. Meaning is studied as

the relationship between linguistic expression and states of affairs in the world.

• The language-internal approach. Meaning is studied in terms of relations between expres-sions within a language.

• The conceptualist approach. The meaning of expression is equated with a conceptualization in the mind of language user.

The Language–world approach

Two perspectives:• The semasiological perspective: goes from

language to the world, and asks: “For this expression, what kinds of situations can be appropriately designated by it?”

• The onomasiological perspective: goes from the world to language, and asks “For this state of affairs, what range of linguistic expressions can appropirately describe it ?”

Inadequacies of language-world approach:(1) Applicable only to expressions which

designate “concrete ” entites.(2) It is an error to suppose that linguistic

expressions refer directly to the world at all; rather, linguistic expressions refer to mental entities in mental space.

(3) Offers a less than complete account of meaning. There is more to the meaning of an expression than the relation between the expression and its referents.

(4) Often, one and the same state of affairs can be linguistically encoded in different ways.

(i) a. Someone stole her diamonds from the Princess.

b. Someone robbed the Princess of her diamonds.

c. Her diamonds were stolen from the Princess.

d. The Princess was robbed of her diamonds.

The language-internal approach

Two ways of implementing this approach:

Paradigmatic relations: the relations between different expressions.

( synonymy, hyponymy, opposites, entailment)

Syntagmatic relations: the relations between items which co-occur within an expression.

(collocations)

The conceptualist approach

Three basic notions

• Profile

• Base

• domain