CogSci MA 2010

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1.1

The formalist model

Language as a system of signs

1.1.1 Pre-20th century linguistics

the origins of language language change over time how the structure of ideas are reected in the structure of language historical comparative linguistics, anthropological linguistics, lexicography

The Ancient World

for nothing has its name by nature but only by usage and custom there is a correctness of name existing by nature for everything: name is not simply that which a number of people jointly agree to call a thing Plato, Cratylus, 4th c. BC

Medieval experiments

The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II made linguistic experiments on the vile bodies of hapless infants, bidding fostermothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no wise to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language [...] or Greek or Latin or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands and gestures and gladness of countenance, and blandishments. Brother Salimbene di Adam, 13th c.

James IV of Scotland took a dumb woman and put her in Inchkieth, and gave her two young children in company with her, and furnished them of all necessary things pertaining to their nourishment, that is to say food, drink, re and candle, clothes, with all other kinds of necessaries which is required to man or woman, desiring the eect hereof to come to know what language the children would speak when they came to lawful age. Some say they spoke good Hebrew, but as to myself I know not but by hearsay. History of Robert Lindesay, 16th c.

1.1.2 Structuralism (turn of the 19th-20th century)

The task of linguistics will be: a) to make a description and write the history of all the languages that can be reached, which means writing the history of all language families and reconstructing, as far as possible, the lines of parentage in each family; b) to identify the forces that are at work permanently and universally in all languages, and the general laws to which all language change is subject; c) to delimit and dene itself. (Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique gnrale, e e 1916)

What is language?

langue . . . is a system of signs expressing ideas . . . a principle of classication . . . never exists completely in one individual, it only does so in the community parole . . . is an individual act of free will and intelligence

What is a sign?

The linguistic sign is an arbitrary, two-faced mental unit: signiant signier, form, an acoustic image signi signied, concept e

What does a sign system consist of?

relations between signs: syntagmatic relations between the subunits of a larger unit of language paradigmatic (associative) relations between signs that are similar in some way (belong to the same lexical, morphological or semantic category)

1.1.3 The scientic study of language

Immediate Constituent Analysis:

A linguistic form which bears no partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form is a simple form or morpheme. [. . . ] From all this it appears that every complex form is entirely made up of morphemes. [. . . ] However, the structure of complex forms is by no means as simple as this; we could not understand the forms of a language if we merely reduced all the complex forms to their ultimate constituents. Any English-speaking person who concerns himself with this matter, is sure to tell us that the immediate constituents of Poor John ran away are the two forms poor John and ran away; that each of these is, in turn, a complex form; [. . . ] The total stock of stock of morphemes in a language is its lexicon. (Leonard Bloomeld, Language, 1933)
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Distributional method (Post-Bloomfieldians)

complementary distribution how to distinguish phonemes substitution classes how to determine constituents

Tagalog (Philippines) [d] and [r] Whats the rule?

Tagalog Englishtransla.on

da$ dara$ dumi marumi mandurukot mandukot dai darai dami marami

arrives willarive dirt dirty pickpocket topickpocket complains willcomplain quan$ty alot

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Subs%tu%onclasses(distribu%on)
Thegolfcourseislocatedoutsidethevillage. Thegolfcourseislocatedbehindthewoods. Thegolfcourseissituatedbehindthewoods. Theplaygroundissituatedbehindthewoods. Theplaygroundissituatedbesidethewoods. Theplaygroundissituatedbesidethecold,darkwoods. ?Aplaygroundissituatedbesidethecolddarkwoods.

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The aims of linguistics

The task of the structural linguist, as a scientist, is . . . essentially one of classication. The purpose, however, is not simply to account for all the utterances which comprise his corpus at a given time; . . . Rather, the analysis of the linguististic scientist is to be of such a nature that the linguist can account also for utterances which are not in his corpus at a given time. That is, as a result of his examination he must be able to predict what other utterances the speakers of the language might produce . . . The analytical process thus parallels what goes on in the nervous system of a language learner, particularly, perhaps, that of a child learning his rst language. (Hockett, A note on structure, 1948)

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1.2

Generative Grammar

1.2.1 Structuralism (again)

Generative grammar: a nite system of rules that denes an innite set of strings that represent the well-formed sentences of a given language. The work of analysis [of corpora] leads right up to the statements which enable anyone to synthesise or predict utterances in the language. These statements form a deductive system with axiomatically dened initial elements and with theorems concerning the relations among them. The nal theorems would indicate the structure of the utterances of the language in terms of the preceding parts of the system. (Zellig Harris, Methods in Structural Linguistics, 1951)

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1.2.2 Chomskys revolution

The limitations of corpus-analysis:

Observable data can only provide information about linguistic performance; performance can be inuenced by various non-linguistic factors. A corpus can only provide positive (grammatical data); the non-occurrence of a string may be accidental. The primary data for linguistics should be provided by native speakers grammaticality judgements.
The aims of linguistic theory:

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observational adequacy The lowest level of success is achieved if the grammar presents the observed data correctly. descriptive adequacy A second and higher level of success is achieved when the grammar gives a correct account of the linguistic intuition of the native speaker, and species the observed data in terms of signicant generalizations that express underlying regularities in the language. explanatory adequacy A third and still higher level of success is achieved when the associated linguistic theory provides a general basis for selecting a grammar that achieves the second level of success over other grammars consistent with the relevant observed data that do not achieve this level. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 1964)

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. . . there is a tension between the demands of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. To achieve the latter, it is necessary to restrict available descriptive mechanisms so that few languages are accessible . . . To achieve descriptive adequacy, however, the available devices must be rich and diverse enough to deal with the phenomena exhibited in possible human languages. The obvious way to approach such problems is to seek general principles governing rule application that can be abstracted from individual rules and attributed to the initial state S0, thus expressed in UG rather particular grammars. (Knowledge of Language, 1986)

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1.2.3 Cognitive revolution: back to empiricism

Linguists: Goldberg, Jackendo, Van Valin, Lako; psychologists, computer scientists, etc. experimental psycholinguistics corpus linguistics (internet + computing power) neurolinguistics (e.g., brain imaging) emphasis on semantics, pragmatics and communication

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