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Outcomes of Jesse’s class
• Many communicative systems (CS) exist in the non human animal kingdom (bees, birdsongs, vervet monkeys)
• They are very un-language like
• JS’s hypothesis: Language evolved gradually, maybe over 2 m years
My task: How does the end result of language evolution look like?
Main thesis: Language as a computational facility.Units of computation
Word level: Morphemes
Sound level: Phonemes
Syntactic level: Phrases
Semantic level: Logical primitives
Combinatorial apparatus
Concatenate/merge
Concatenate/merge
Concatenate/merge
Apply/infer
For the future:The logical problem of language evolution
• If language evolved, there must have been intermediate links:
VMCS …IL…HSL
Where:
VMCS = Vervet monkeys communication system
HSL = The language of Homo Sapiens
IL = intermediate link
• IL should be substantially different from both VMCS and
HSL
• How could IL look like?
For the future:The logical problem of language evolution
• A very rough first guess on IL:
1. IL has fewer primitive units (e.g., fewer ‘words’)
2. IL has simpler modes of combination
(e.g. some limit on the size of the ‘chunks’)
me + hungry me hungry
me + love + you me love you
For the future:The logical problem of language evolution
1. With very few units (even just 2) and
2. At least one ‘iterable’ mode of combination,
You can express the whole of math and physics.
‘Iterable’ = if you can combine n units, you can also
combine n+1 units.
VMCS …IL…HSL
Chomsky’s guess:
If IL has (2), then it is like HSL; if not, it is like VMCS
What is a word?
swim swims swimmer swim coach
The paradox of compounding
black bird two meanings
black tiny bird one meaning
N NP
A N A N
black bird black bird
Compounding in Italian
Quella nave draga mine
That ship sweeps mines
Quelle navi sono draga mine
Those ships are mine sweepers
Quella nave, cosa draga __?
That ship, what sweeps__?
What does that ship sweep?
* Quelle navi, cosa sono draga __?
Words as atoms
Even though compounds are made up of more than one word their components are inaccessible to prototypical syntactic processes (like pronominalization, movement, etc.).
This is why compounds count as single words.
The inner structure of words
N N V N
N N N Af V Af V Af
pet fish swim s swim s swim er
inflectional derivational
these three may count as
one (content) word: one
arbitrary sound meaning
association [listemes]
How many words (/listemes) do we know?
A good size lexicon: 90.000 entries
Shakespeare: 15.000 words
You?:
Morphological variation: Analytic Languages
English: 4 Verb forms
Chinese: no bound morphemes
Wɔ men tan tçin lə
I plural play piano perfective
We played the piano
Synthetic Languages
• Italian: 50 V forms• Greek: 350 V forms• Turkish: 2000 V forms• Sora (Munda, Eastern India): ?
aninɲamjɔtenanin -ɲam -jɔ -te -nhe catch fish non past dohe is doing fish catchinghe is catching fish
Bound and free morphemes
V V Af
walk ed ‘walk did’V V Afcammin eró ‘cammin avró’(I) will walk (I) to walk have
Germanic: V roots are free morphemesRomance: V roots are bound morphemes
Productivity of the lexicon
We do not want to make extensive use of
retroactivations
He totally outwimps me
He outchomskyed even Chomsky
Non concatenative morphology
kataba kutib aktub
wrote has been written am writing
a u i a u
CVCVCV CVCVC VCCVC
k t b k t b k t b
Summary
Morpheme: a minimal unit (sequence of sounds) associated with a meaning
table-s snore-s
Words are structures composed of morphemes (typically by concatenation)
humid-ify-er
Main morphological processes
• Derivationun happy ness
• Inflectionyou walk / he walks
• Compoundingpet fish mine sweeper
subject to parametric variation
Content morpheme vs. function morphemes
• Content morpheme can be (and are) constantly added to the lexicon
• humid-ify• wuggy= having a surface with little goose
bumps I want to dewuggify my skin
• Function morphemes are hard to add/deletewuggylok tables ???
The lexicon is based on a discrete combinatorial calculus
Words have a hidden structure
• bláck bird vs. black bírd
• Quella nave draga mine
That ship sweeps mines
• Quelle navi sono dragamine
Those ships are mine sweepers
Writing: a human invention
• Logographic systems: Chinese, kanji
箱 xiāng ‘box’• Phonographic
- Syllabic: Cherokee, Devanāgāri
क ka ग ga
- Phonemic: Latin, Cyrillic
ж ʒ д d ы ɨ
History of writing systems• Mesopotamia (Sumer) 3200BC• Possible precursors
Ancient number writings (Iran, 4000 BC)
Pictograms• Egyptians hieroglyphs (3400 BC)
Pictograms that evolved into writing through contacts with the Sumerians
• Chinese logographs (1200bc)• Mesoamerica (Zapotec, Mexico 700 BC)
Necessary unfaithfulness of writing systems
democrat æ
democracy ə
cats s sip
dogs z zip
conosco sk I know
conosci sh You know
How do English vowels sound
[i] beat, we [ɪ] bit, consist
[ɛ] bet, guest [æ] bat, anger
[u] boot, who [ʊ] put, foot
[ɔ] bought, wrong [ɑ] pot, father
[ʌ] but, oven [ə] among, sofa
http://www.ipachart.com/
Consonants
• Do the vocal cords vibrate?
Yes: z b ðNo: s, p, θ
• Place of articulation
Where is the airstream restricted?
• Manner of articulation
How is the airstream restricted?
Place of articulation
• Bilabial: [p], [b], [m], [w], [wa a]
• Labiodental: [f],[v]
• Dental: [θ], [ð]
• Alveolar: [t], [d], [s],[z], [n],[l],[ɹ]
• Palatal: [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ],[dʒ],[j]
• Velar: [k], [g], [ŋ]
• Glottal: [h], [ʔ]
Manner of articulation
• Stops: [p],[t],[k],[ʔ],[n]
• Fricatives: [f],[θ],[s],[ʃ]
• Affricates: [tʃ]
• Nasals: [n],[m], [ŋ]
• Liquids: [l], [ɹ]
• Glides: [j],[w]
Generating ‘exotic’ vowels
• Front rounded
y French: [ty] ‘you’ German: Grüss
ø French: [fø] ‘fire’ German: Schön
• Back unrounded
[ɯ] Min Nan: [tɯ] ‘pig’
• Mid unrounded
[ɨ] Russian: [bɨl] ‘(I) was’
Generating exotic consonants
• Bilabial fricative: [β]
Ewe (Niger-Congo, e.g. Ghana/Togo)
[ɛβɛ]
• Velar fricative: [x]
• German: [bax] ‘small river’
• Pharingeal fricative: [ʕ]
Hebrew: [ʕor] ‘skin’
Exotic consonants of Italian
Consonanl length:
[pane] [pan:e] [fato] [fat:o]
bread creams fate fact
Palatalized consonants
[baɲ:o] ‘bath’ [aʎ:o] ‘garlic’
Alveolar affricate:
[pit:sa] ‘pizza’
IPA chart non-pulmonic consonants
• Clicks: ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ
• Implosives: ɓ ɗ ʄ ᶑ
• Ejectives: pʼ tʼ kʼ
Double blockage:
lips / velum and glottis
In clicks and implosives air is sucked in
Suprasegmental phenomena
• Stress
récord recórd
áncora ‘anchor’ ancóra ‘again’
• Tone
[mā] ‘mother’ [may ] ‘hemp’
[mǎ] ‘horse’ [ma{ ] ‘scold’
Phonemes and allophones
• tuck [tʰʌʔk] aspirated
• stuck [stʌʔk] released
• put [pʊʔt] unreleased
• kitten [kʰɪʔn~ ] glottal stop
• pitted [pʰɪɾed] flap
• truck[tjɹʌʔk] palatalized
Phoneme
• A class of sounds with a unique grammatical (typically, distinctive) function
• k/kh are allophones in English; they are different phonemes in Hindi
[ki:l] ‘parched grain’ [khi:l] ‘nail’• s/z are different phonemes in English,
they are allophones in Italian
Towards a grammar of the sounds of language
Sounds of the languages of the world are produced in a largely uniform way through a few choices in the phonatory apparatus (which, however, generate a large domain of possible units)