Topic 7 Sentences Summary Word Phonology The form words is governed by combination rules which account for phonological well formedness Morphology may cause complex words whos phonological form is ill formed The phonology supplies repair rules to fix the problem by changing one phoneme into another phoneme These phonological REPAIR RULES are also called allomorphy rules Then after repair phonemes are realizes as allophones allophonic rules Like words sentences have three layers of structured information Recall that words have three layers of structure This means that if you put words together in a sentence the sentence also has three layers of structure Category Meaning Form Sentence Syntax Structure building rules Sentences can be broken down into phrases A phrase is a semantic unit that has a certain function in the sentence like subject or object A phrase can consist of one or more words A multi word phrase has a hierarchical structure A phrase can contain another phrase within it A phrase has a category label which directs how it can combine We can combine units that themselves are the product of combination A structure of type A can occur inside a structure of type A As shown a sentence within a sentence Phrases sometimes have to be moved or delete or inserted Transformation make reference to the hierarchical structure Diversity Languages can differ in terms of the units and rules at all layers of words and Topic 8 The Argument from Universals Something that appears to be true of everything What is a Universal Unity and Diversity sentences grammar phonology syntax and semantics Unity Nevertheless all languages seem to share properties Shared properties are called linguistic universals Key question What explains the existence of these universals One possible answer the innate Universal Grammar The Argument from universals Assumption There are universals of language Linguists try to understand the structure of languages There are two steps Description gathering data Explanation formulating hypotheses building theories Gathering data is crucial of course but not always so easy Many languages are spoken in remote areas without having a writing system WORSE many languages are going to disappear really soon Language itself is universal All human societies have spoken language In all societies children learn languages in the same way Without explicit instruction by just being exposed to it In roughly the same amount of time Any child growing up anywhere can learn any language Theoretical covert or hidden versus descriptive overt or observable Universals Recall that the notion language refers to two things Mental grammar utterances Correspondingly we have Covert universals regard the mental grammar which is hidden Overt universals regard properties of utterances which are observable Overt Universals data driven Based on surveys of large numbers of languages corpus or So called typological studies Focus on shallow observable measurable properties of utterances Theory independent Have a statistical flavor Often stated as tendencies I e most or 99 Covert Universals Are based on a smaller number of language because it takes a lot of time to Focus on hidden properties properties of the mental grammar analyze a language Are theory dependent Are typically not very clearly reflected in the observable utterances Have a NON statistical flavor Often stated as laws or principles Verb and object closer than verb and subject Problem is that it is theory dependent so if the theory has a content that you don t think it is valid then the theory goes out the window Another problem is you won t see this in every language Relationship Covert universals are reflected in the overt universals but often not perfectly to see them you need careful analysis of the covert phenomena Overt universals may be reflections of other factors that determine the shape of language Overt universals can obscure covert universals Logical types of universals Limits on diversity Even though languages differ it would seem that there are limits on the diversity Parameters capture this idea where there is diversity we see that language often choose from a limited array of choice parameters Parameters are like multiple choice questions or light switches either on or off So what might be language specific unconditional universals All languages have morphemes words phrases and sentences All languages have nouns and verbs and several other word categories All languages have hierarchical structure in complex words and in sentences All languages have recursive structures Chomsky All languages have hierarchical phonological structure in that phonemes are grouped into syllables and so on All languages have allomorphy rules Even more specific examples All languages have means to express negation All languages make use of intonation sentence melody All languages have means for forming questions All language have ways of making new words All languages have a low vowel a All languages have voiceless stops like t Unconditional universals that regard the innate universal grammar The design of the grammar The model of grammar with a lexicon merge and six components The design of each component with basic units structure building rules structure changing repair rules and realizational rules Examples of implicational universals If a language has the nasal vowels it will also have oral vowels Nasal push air through your nose No language with only nasal If a language has a dual ending boy a two boys it also has a plural No instance of a language having a dual ending without a plural If a language has a superlative it also has a comparative Superlative est Comparative er Exist together but superlative can t exist if comparative doesn t Examples of disjunctive universals aka PARAMETERS This often concerns two possibilities E g In phrase structure VP the verb either precedes the object VO or it follows it OV English Spanish Chinese VO Hindi Japanese OV Place word stress at the beginning or at the end of the word never in the middle The options are ONLY beginning or end Keep in mind where in different languages place questions words English puts it at the start Other languages keep them in place Ex Chinese and Japanese You can either keep it in front or keep in place there are not many other options Question Do all language universals necessarily support UG Can we say if all languages share a property P it follows that property is specified in