Introduction to Syntax and Language Variations - Test 3 | LING 2100, Study notes of Linguistics

Download Introduction to Syntax and Language Variations - Test 3 | LING 2100 and more Study notes Linguistics in PDF only on Docsity! Test 3 Answers Part 1 – Syntax 1. E.g. English has SVO word order i. The cat is on the mat (both grammatical and acceptable) ii. the mat is on the cat ( grammatical but unacceptable, i.e anomalous) iii. *the is cat on the mat (ungrammatical) iv *mat on is the cat (ungrammatical) 2. A. Open Class Lexical Categories a. Nouns (N) i. Identify: plural by adding –s; occur with articles and demonstratives; can be modified by descriptive words b. Verbs (V) i. Identify: past –ed; auxiliaries like ‘should’, ‘could’ c. Adjectives (Adj) i. Identify: comparative, superlative; describe nouns d. Adverbs (Adv) i. Express manner (quickly), describe attitude/judgment of speaker (unfortunately), or indicate temporal frequency (often) ii. Identify: sometimes –ly ending B. Closed Class Lexical Categories e. Determiners (Det) i. Express  Definiteness: the, those Indefiniteness: a Possession: our, his, my Quantity: every, three ii. Always appear before nouns f. Prepositions (Prep) i. Appear before noun phrases  for everyone, with a spoon g. Auxiliary Verbs (Aux)  (Infl or I in X-Bar Theory) i. Helping verbs – can, will, do, must, have h. Pronouns (Pro) i. Replace nouns (he, she, it) i. Conjunctions (Conj) i. And, but, yet, so, or 3. Basic Syntactic Roles a. Agent – person who does the action  Bob hit Bill. b. Patient – thing that action happens to  Bob hit Bill. c. Instrument – thing used/involved in an actionBob hit Bill with a ball d. Theme – thing that undergoes movement or change  Bob fell. e. Experiencer – person/animal which has a perceptual or mental experience  Bob hates Bill f. Recipient – thing/person who comes into possession of something  Bob gave Bill some flowers g. Source – Where a change starts from  I fear Robin 4. A. If a sequence can be relocated to the front of the sentence without changing the basic meaning of the original sentence, then the sequence is a constituent. 1. He criticized that boy very harshly a. Very harshly, he criticized that boy. b. The boy, he criticized very harshly c. *That boy very harshly, he criticized Analysis: This shows that the sequences ‘Very harshly’, ‘The boy’ are constituents in (1) but the sequence ‘That boy very harshly’ is not a constituent in (1). B. Only constituents (of the same category) can be conjoined by conjunctions like and and or a. The dog very quickly stormed off i. The dog and the cat very quickly stormed off ii. *The dog very and the cat very quickly stormed off Analysis: This shows that the sequences ‘the dog’ and ‘the cat’ are constituents in (a) but the sequence ‘the dog very’ is not. 5. Tree Diagrams 6. Phrase Structure Rules Part 2 – Language Variation 1. Terms to Define + Examples a. Dialect – any variety of a language spoken by a group of people that’s characterized by systematic differences from other varieties of the same language in terms of structure or lexical features  ex. English spoen in the north or south b. Accent - A systematic phonological variation in speech of a speaker or a group of speakers i. Ex. In Oregon and Georgia the phrase: ‘park the car’ is pronounced [phɑɹk ðə khɑɹ] In Boston, London it is: [ph ɑ: k ðə khɑ: ] ii. Every person speaks with an accent (the accent belonging to your speech community) b. Jargon – technical language i. Ex. Rhinitis = runny nose c. Slang – stylistic choices in vocabulary i. Ex. Common – TV, fridge; in-group – teenager slang, etc. ‘bangin’ d. Communicative Isolation – when a group of people in a coherent speech community is relatively isolated from speakers outside that community i. The Gypsies in the rural areas in Britain who speak their Romani (language of the Gypsies) e. Speech Community – a group of people speaking the same dialect – defined by extralinguistic features such as region, socioeconomic status, age, gender, race i. Ex. Gypsies in Britain f. Speech Style - variation in speech based on factors like topic or subject matter, social setting and addressee i. ‘tu’ (informal) vs ‘usted’ (formal) in Spanish