Terminology

The scientific study of language and its structure including the study of grammar, synax and phonetics.

English as native language (Australia, UK)
English as second language (Nigeria, India)
-> English as official langauage
English as foreign langauage (China, Japan)

between 1.27 and 2 billion

extension of British Empire
rise of the US after WW 2
information and communication technologies
globalization and internationalization

consists of the signifiant (form) the representation of the sound of a word in your mind and the signifié (meaning) the representation in your mind of the thing the sound stands for, connected by a symbolic link
 
example:
/sprɪŋ/ -> spring

sychronic - study of the system of a language at a given point in time
diachronic - study of the changes that can be observed in the course of the history of a langauge

syntagmatic - relationship between linguistic signs which can occur in a sentence
paradigmatic - relationship between linguistic signs which can occur in the same place in a sentence

langue - all those who 'speak English' share a particular langue
parole - a set of utterances which they produce when they are 'speaking English' constitute instances of parole

human - Language as auch, questions if there is an inborn language faculty or general principles operating in all languages

particular - showing its properties, rules of grammar, vocabulary

cognitive - language of an individual, questions of language and the mind
social - a language as used by a speech community

competence - what a speaker if a language knows implicitly

performance - what the speaker does

System - the totality of possible realizations
Norm - the totality of traditional realizations

largest unit of analysis
formation is rule-governed in way which formation of texts is not
(difficult to define considering spoken Eng)

a unit of grammatical organization next below the sentence consisting of a subject and a predicate

dependent - if it forms a constituent of a larger clause

independent - if it is not a constituent of a larger clause

compound - 1 sentence, more than 1 independent clause, coordinated (comma, and/or/but)

complex - 1 sentence, 1main clause, at least one subordinate clause

subject
- obligatory in an active declarative clause, realized by noun phrase or can be replaced by one, shows concord with the verb of the predicate

predicate
- obligatory, contains a verb, shows concord with subject

adjunct
- a clause constituent which is optional from a structural point of view

follows subject, contains one finite verb form which shows concord with subject and is tensed, expresses an action or relation

pronouns take objective case, follows verb, refer to/describe subject (subject complement) or direct object (object complement, can often be replaced by adjective

positional mobility, providing information about time/space/manner/circumstances, everything else

SV (She is reading.) - intransitive
SVC (This is a book.) - copula
SVA (She was there.) - copula
SVO (She is reading a book.) - monotr
SVOO (He gave her a book.) - ditr
SVOC (She called him a fool.) - complex tr
SVOA (She put the book on the table.) - com

formal element
A small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a constituent of a clause

headed - contains head (word which stands for a phrase of its own), can contain modifiers structurally dependent on head

non-headed - contains multiple obligatory elements (only prepositional phrases)

head: noun/pronoun

can have modifiers further describing head
(very cool song [premodifier]
city of London [postmod])

can have determinative to establish reference
( [John's] brother
[this] book )

complex of a verb and the auxiliary verbs that are used to express grammatical categories like aspect, modality, voice

head: adjective or adverb

pre- and postmodifier possible

[very] nice
friendly [to him]

beautifully [indeed]
[much more] slowly [than they had expected]

preposition + prepositional complement

to + the island
on + going there
under + the table

open - number of words they compromise is not restricted and new members can be added
nouns, adjectives, full verbs, adverbs


closed - number is limited and not easily changed
prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, modal and primary verbs

can take determiner
can be replaced by pronoun
plural form (sister)
genitive form (my sister's boyfriend)
can be premodified by an adjective (my evil sister)

full verbs carry lexical meaning
base form which can occur on its own
are tensed so morphologically marked for present/past tense
can form present participle with -ing (speaking)
can form past participle (spoken)
only as main verb in verb phrase

modal verbs
do not admit suffixation by third-person singular -s and do not have participle forms
only as auxiliary in verb phrase
can, may, shall, will, could, should, would

primary verbs
be, do, have
can occur as aux or main verb

attributive use - premodifier of noun
(a great idea)

predicative use after seem - subject complement with seem
(this idea seems great)

can be premodified by very (very good idea)
can take comparative and superlative
(the greatest president we ever had)

typically head of adjective phrase as Cs or Co or premodifier in noun phrase

heterogen

simple: just, only, well, back
compound: somehow, therefore, hereby
[closed classes]
derivations: beautifully, clockwise
[open class]

as adverbial in the clause, premodifier of adjective or of another adverb

cannot take that-clause, infinitive clause or subjective case personal pronoun as complement

relating or connecting function
introduce nominal complements or -ing participle clauses

simple: as, at, for, in, like, to
complex: as for, next to, instead of

only in prepositional phrases

coordinating conjunctions
combine two elements on same level of analysis
(and, but, or)

subordinating conjunctions
introduce dependent clause, relating or connecting function
(if, when, before, although)

establish reference or quantify
as determinatives in noun phrases

predeterminers: half, all, double
central: the, a/an, my
postdeterminers: many, few, five

in order: all my many friends

can take same syntactic slots as nouns
some show contrast between subjective, objective and genitive case
(I/me/mine, she/her/hers)
some show gender difference (he/she/it)

central: I, me, myself, mine
reciprocal: each other, one another
relative: who, which, that (relative clauses)
interrogative: who, whom, which (questions)
indefinite: someone, anybody, no one

meaningful elements, consisting of phonemes, not analyses further

smallest abstract linguistic unit that serves to carry meaning

{he} {push} {-ing}

one of several possible phonological realizations of a morpheme

/t/, /d/, /īd/ are allomorphs of past tense morph {D}

free morphemes can occur as words on their own
{he} {push} {through}

bound morphemes cannot occur as words on their own
{D} (past tense), {S} (plural)

lexical content {push} {in-} as in unpopular

general grammatical functions {he} {D}

derivational: bound lexical
inflectional: bound grammatical

Bound
nouns
{S} plural - girls
{S} genitive - John's brother

verbs
{S} third person singular - he sleeps
{-ing} present participle - She' s sleeping
{D} past tense - she surprised him
{-en} past participle - he had known it

adjectives
{-er} comparative - bigger than you
{-est} superlative - fastest car

Free

a morph that represents two different morphemes

began: {began} + {PAST TENSE}
nice: {mouse} + {PLURAL}

{put} -> past tense: {put} + {ø}
{sheep} -> plural: {sheep} + {ø}

which allomorphs occurs depends on the word/morpheme

e.g. ox requires /ən/

which allomorph occurs depends on the preceding phoneme

{S} plural
/s/ after voiceless cons except /s,ʃ,tʃ/
/z/ after vowels or voiced consonants except /z,ʒ,dʒ/
/ɪz/ after /s,ʃ,tʃ,z,ʒ,dʒ/

carry no meaning

/r/ in children

a bound morpheme that occurs only once in the language

blackberry {black} + {berry}
But
cranberry {cran-} + {berry}
raspberry {rasp-} + {berry}

tokens - every occurrence of every word is counted

types - every word is counted only once, no matter how often it occurs

wf: surprise, surprises, surprised
lexemes: surprise, university, match
lexical units: surprise, match1, match2

a lexeme is a family of lexical units
a lexical unit is the union of a single sense with a lexical form
a lexical form is an abstraction from a set of word forms which differ only in respect of inflections

combination of a dement (=base) and a bound morpheme (=affix)

Prefixation
prefix + base
usually no change of word class

Suffixation
base + suffix
often change of word class

new word is formed without any formal change (change of word class)

bottle (n) - bottle (v)
clean (adj) - clean (v)

zero-derivation - no change

combination of free morphemes

determinative
one constituent determines the other
(daylight, water-bed)

copulative
both constituents are at the same level
(bitter-sweet, sleepwalk)

new word is formed by taking away an element that looks like a suffix from an existing word

donate (from donation)
babysit (from babysitter)

shortening a polysyllabic word, often to single syllable

microphone - mic
laboratory - lab

forming two existing words by maintaining elements of both constituents

breakfast + lunch -> brunch
smoke + fog -> smog
situation + comedy -> sitcom

shortening an expression by using the initial letters of the words/elements it consists of
pronounced as one word

AIDS, laser

shortening an expression bei using the initial letters of the words/elements it consists of
pronounced separately

TV, PC

clipping and/or suffixation
highly informal, often used in close social groups

telly, comfy, weirdo

second element repeats first, often with a change in the initial consonants or in the medial vowels

goody-goody, walkie-talkie, ping-pong

imitation of a non-speech sound in words

cuckoo, woof

the extent to which a particular affix or word formation process is likely to be used in the production of new words in the language

-th almost dead (growth)
-ity intermediate (productivity)
-ness highly productive (coolness)

words that correspond to the rule of English word formation but are not used for various reasons

blocking: word untall is blocked by the existence of short

a word that has been formed and by a speaker on a particular occasion but not spread any further

often used in press
(England's knightmare)

existing stock of words, candidates for being entered into a dictionary

a collection of naturally-occurring Language texts, chosen to characterize a state or variety of a language

British National Corpus
Corpus of Contemporary American English
Brown Corpus

idex to the words in a text
centre of corpus linguistics because it gives access to important language patterns

KWIC
key word in context
mostly with computer

representativeness
Does the corpus adequately represent the language variety we are interested in?

balance
appropriate mixture of different genres, spoken/written language, speakers of different regions/age/social backgrounds/genders

size
corpus needs to be big enough
~100 mio words

institutionalized lexemes are prefabricated items

preferred ways of saying things
conventionality building blocks used as convenient routines in language production

the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text

stat significant
collocations that occur more frequently than would be expected on the basis of the frequency of occurrence of the individual items

institutionalized
typical, specific and characteristic relations between two words
characterized by their unexpectedness on the semantic level

like collocation but meaning is not transparent

group of words with special meaning different from ordinary meaning of each separate word

various degrees of lexical stability

symbol/form symbolizes thought/meaning

thought/meaning refers to referent

But
words in isolation do not have reference, depends on communication situation
referring expressions carry reference

linguistic sign denotes set of objects (denotatum)
property of linguistic sign, independent of actual speech situations, generally same for speakers of a speech community

referring expression refers to referent (individual members of denotatum, subset of denotatum, all members of denotatum)
mit property of ls but of referring expression, created in particular speech situation, created by individual speaker

associations speakers have with a word beyond its meaning
arise from the properties of the denotatum
not necessarily shared by whole speech community and they vary according to culture, historical period and experience of an individual

a lexeme is polysemous when it has more than one meaning, when it comprises more than one lexical unit

two lexemes are homonymous if their forms are identical

words spelled differently but pronounced the same

words spelled the same but pronounced differently

unilateral entailment
relationship between a hyperonym (superordinate) and a hyponym (subordinate)

two lexical units are co-hyponyms if they are hyponyms of the same hyperonym

fox/wolf are co-hyponyms of the hyperonym animal

bilateral entailment

divide a conceptual domain into two mutually exclusive compartments

true/false, dead/alive

fully gradable
members of a pair denote degrees of some variable property such as length, speed, weight

members move in opposite directions on a scale representing degrees of the relevant variable property
do not strictly bisect a domain

marked (How young are you?)
unmarked = neutral (How old are you?)

or relational/perspectival opposition

members of the opposition pair express the same relation between two entities, but do so from a perspective

method of analyzing meanings in terms of semantic components which are gained through contrasting meanings of lexical units

components need to be
atomic - should be impossible to split up further
recurrent - not just designed to cover meaning of one lexical unit
binary - describable in terms of +- values
universal - applicable to all languages

language determines thought and linguistic categories limite and determine categories

speakers better at remembering colours for which there is a colour term for in their language

actual realization of a phoneme
speech sound

smallest distinctive unit in the sound system of a language

set of phones that realize the same phoneme

pair of words that differ in meaning and in only one sound, a test to find out whether a sound is a phoneme

complementary distribution
allophones are exclusive and never occur in the same environment
depends on surrounding sounds
cannot replace one another

free variation
choice of an allophone depends on factors such as variety (BE/AE), social class, situation
depends on the speaker
can replace one another

quality of sound articulated by temporary obstruction of the air stream which passes through the vocal tract

lenis - low intensity of articulation
fortis - high intensity of articulation

quality of sound articulated without obstruction of the air stream passings through the vocal tract

classified in terms of openness/closeness of the mouth, frontness/backness of the tonguand shape of the lips

process whereby one sound influences the articulation of another

progressive - influence is forward to a following sound
(plural -s in cats, suffix added to word ending in voiceless consonant, suffix has been assimilated, becomes voiceless)

regressive - influence is backwards to a preceding sound, in rapid conversation
(that pig, bad boy, this shirt, good guess
final alveolar is assimilated to place of articulation of next consonant)

process when two adjacent sounds unit and fuse into one

only alveolar plosives/fricatives and a following /j/

t + j = tʃ (what you)
d + j = dʒ (did you)

process in which a sound that ought to be in a word is deleted
it may affect vowels and consonants

e in frightening
p in raspberry
d in wronged them
d in grandfather

process of inserting a sound into a word

/ns/ -> /nts/ in fence, chance
length, strength

process in which two syllables become compressed into one

threatening, rattling, genious