Summary

Phonetics

Consonants

1. Place of articulation
   • where airflow is constricted
     • bilabial
     • labio-dental
     • interdental
     • alveolar
     • post-alveolar
     • palatal
     • velar
     • glottal
2. Manner of articulation
   • how airflow is constricted
     • plosive stops
     • nasal stops
     • glottal stops
     • fricatives
     • affricates
     • central approximants
     • lateral approximants
     • flap
3. Voicing
   • feel for vibration at larynx/throat

Convention: voicing + place + manner

Vowels

1. tongue backness
   • front
   • central
   • back
2. jaw height
   • high
   • medium
   • low
3. tenseness
   • tense/lax
4. rounding


Phonology

Allophone

• A sound Phoneme
• Abstract entity

Constrastive

• Replacing the sound with another sound changes meaning of the word Minimal pair
• Sounds differ by one feature
• Contrastive

Complementary Distribution

• Minimal pair
• Contrastive

Free variation

• Non-contrastive
• Can occur in the same phonetic environments

Phonemic Analysis

1. Assume no free variation
2. Look for minimal pairs
   • If minimal pairs is found
     • Two sounds are contrastive
     • Allophones of different phonemes
3. Create a list of environments of the form `X_Y
   • check for complementary distributions
   • if both vowels can be generalised, it is not possible to determine less restricted allophones

Morphology

Morpheme

• A minimal unit of meaning

Allomorphs

• Slightly different forms of a morpheme

Inflectional vs derivational

• inflectional: does not change core meaning and word class
  • s, ing, en, ed, s, er, est, 's
• derivational: changes core meaning/word class

Hierarchial structure

• Monomorphemic: only one morpheme
• Polymorphemic: more than one morpheme

Free and bound

• free morphemes can occur on their own
• affixes cannot occur on their own

Structurally ambiguous

• a word that has more than one possible structure and meaning

Word formation

• affixation (prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix)
• clipping (removing part of a word)
  • back-formation
• compound
• borrowing
• eponyms
• conversion
• initialism
• acronyms

Word Classes

Word class

• part of speech

Open vs closed classes

• open: lexical words (open because new words are constantly created)
• closed: function words (closed because generally no new words are not generated)

Properties of a word class

• Morphological possibilities
  • What kind of morphological operations
• Distribution
  • Where the word occurs in a phrase
• Function

Properties are sufficient, not necessary.

Identification

• Nouns
  • Can be pluralised
  • Can take possessive marker
  • Can appear as A or B in the phrase a A of B
  • Can be preceded by determiners and adjectives in a noun phrase
• Verbs
  • Can be marked for tense
  • Can exhibit agreement with subject
  • Typically appears after subject
  • Can be negated with do not/don’t
  • Can appear after auxiliary verbs
• Adjectives
  • Can be inflected to form comparative or superlative
  • Can occur between a determiner and a noun
  • Can follow copula/linking verb
  • Can follow more/most
  • Can co-occur with other adjectives
  • Modifies nouns
• Adverbs
  • Can be inflected to form comparative or superlative
  • Freedom of positioning
  • Can follow more/most
  • Modify things other than nouns
• Determiner
  • Precedes a noun and optionally adjectives in a noun phrase
  • Possessive, quantificational, demonstrative
• Pronouns
  • Does not precede nouns in a NP
• Preposition
  • Precedes a pronoun or a NP
  • Does not form a NP with the following NP

Syntax

• Argument
  • Expression required by argument-taking expression
• Subject
  • Argument described by argument-taking expression
• Complement
  • Non-subject argument
• Adjuncts
  • Optional expressions

Argument v Adjuncts

• Obligatory v optional

• No more than required v no limit

• Typically cannot be freely ordered vs can

• Typically occur closer to verbs vs occur after arguments

• Constituent

  • String of elements that belong together

Constituency Test

• Answer to questions
  • Ask acceptable question where string of words in question might potentially be answer
• Cleft test
  • It is/was X that Y
• Topicalisation test
  • If a string of words can appear as a topic of a sentence
• Coordination test
  • X and/or Y
• Replacement test
  • May be substituted by a shorter unit

Syntactic/phrasal category

• If a string of words form a phrasal category, they must be constituent
• Categories
  • Noun phrase
    • Can be replaced by pronouns
    • (D) (Adj*) N (PP) or Pr
  • Verb phrase
    • Can be replaced with slept or does so
    • Types
      • Intransitive
        • IV
      • Transitiive
        • TV NP
      • Ditransitive (requires two complements)
        • DTV NP NP
      • Sentential complement
        • V S
  • Preposition phrase
    • Phrasal constituent made up of P NP sequence
    • Can modify a VP within a VP
    • Can modify a N within a NP
    • P NP

Ambiguity

• Structural (arises when more than one possible PS)
• Lexical (arises from a word having more than one possible meaning)

Semantics

Associations between signified

• Superset/subset
  • Hypernym (subset)
  • Hyponym
• Part of
  • Holonym (entire unit)
  • Meronym (part of unit)

Associations between signifiers

• Polyseme
  • Words with multiple related meanings
• Homonym
  • Words with separate unrelated meaning
• Homophones
  • Words pronounced the same with unrelated meaning
• Homographs
  • Words spelt the same way with unrelated meanings
• Synonym
  • Words with approximately the same meaning
• Antonym
  • Words with the opposite meaning
  • Types
    • Complementary antonym
      • word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum
    • Gradable antonym
      • word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which do not lie on a continuous spectrum
• Reverses
  • Denote opposing processes
• Converses
  • Denote two opposing points of view

Relations between sentences/phrases

• Paraphrase
  • If A is true, B is true
• Contradiction
  • If A is true, B is false
• Entailment
  • If A is true, B must be true, but if B is true, A does not have to be true
• Presupposition
  • B is an implicit assumption of A

Layers of meaning

• Denotation vs connotation
  • Literal meaning vs association evoked
• Extension vs intension
  • Object that expression refers to vs intrinsic meaning of expression

Shifting reference

• Sense/intension is fixed
• Reference/extension depends on speaker