Intro to Linguistics

What is a sentence?
• How about this?
A sentence is a string of words.
• But how many sentences is this:
I made her duck.
• At least 5 meanings:
a) I cooked waterfowl for her.
b) I cooked waterfowl belonging to her.
c) I created the (toy or sculpture?) duck she
owns.
d) I caused her to quickly lower her head or
body.
e) I turned her into waterfowl (using my
magic wand?).
 One sentence or 5?
• So do we have 1 sentence or 5?
• What are the criteria for making the
decision?
• Is there a single “truth”?
• Which is more convenient?
• What are we planning to do with the
sentences?
• Some possible goals: have a computer...
• Understand and answer
• Answer based on limited understanding
• Classify documents
• Check for plagiarism
• Check spelling
 Attachment Ambiguity
• No left turn weekdays 4-6 PM except
buses.
• Buses can always turn?
• Buses can never turn?
• Attachment ambiguity
• World knowledge issue: official vehicles
often get special privileges
• No left turn weekdays 4-6 PM except
Fridays.
• What happens on Fridays?
• Attachment ambiguity is a special case
of syntactic ambiguity (sentence
structure).
• If a sentence is just a string of words, how
can we talk about attachment ambiguity?
• If language is not in the mind (which means
it is in the brain), how could we have
phenomena like attachment ambiguity?
 Attachment Ambiguity:
Another Example
• Thank you for not smoking, eating, drinking
or playing radios without headphones.
• Thank you for not eating without
headphones.
• Thank you for drinking.
• An attachment issue again.
• A world knowledge issue again: we
thank people for doing helpful things
and for not doing annoying things.
Famous Attachment Example
• I saw the man in the park with the
telescope.
• The park has the telescope.
• The man has the telescope.
• The seeing was done with the
telescope.
• Attachment example in everyday text
• I saw the Golden Gate Bridge flying into
San Francisco.
• Who/what was flying?
 Other Kinds of Ambiguity:
Lexical Ambiguity
• Lexical = word-level ambiguity
• Is “book” a noun or a verb here?
• I have a book on that topic.
• I book my flights online.
• A heuristic rule:
• Often (but not always), a word
preceded by a pronoun is a verb.
• Heuristic = rule of thumb
 Pronoun Resolution:
Another Kind of Ambiguity,
Another Heuristic
• Pronoun resolution = deciding what a
pronoun refers to
• What does “it” refer to here?
• Fred's hat was blown off by the wind.
He tried to catch it.
• He tried to catch the hat?
• He tried to catch the wind?
• A heuristic rule:
• Pronouns often refer to the most recent
noun.
• But that heuristic doesn’t work here.
 Issues in Pragmatics and
Discourse Structure
• Pragmatics = language in real-world
context (e.g., issues that need world
knowledge)
• Discourse structure = language in linguistic
context (e.g., previous discourse turns)
• Turn = what one speaker says at one
time in a dialogue

• We elected Kim president.

• Did Kim take office?
• We elected Kim president but she never
took office.
• What happened here?
• Presuppositions are defeasible.
 What is linguistics?
• ... and why study it in Cognitive Science?
• We can’t open up the head and watch
the brain work.
• Even if we could, would we see
cognition?
• Language is a window into the brain
• What we can see directly
• Physiology of speaking
• Observable behaviors: what people say
and how they say it and we understand
each other to mean
• What we can’t see directly
• Our knowledge of language: how
language is produced and processed in
the brain
• Need to infer that from what we can
see directly (i.e., behavior)
 Conscious vs. Implicit
Knowledge
• Are people always consciously aware of
what they know?

I ran down the stairs.

I chopped down the tree.

Down the stairs I ran.

*Down the tree I chopped.

*I ran the stairs down.

I chopped the tree down.
 Conscious vs. Implicit
Knowledge: Another Example
• This one is ambiguous:
When did the president say he would
balance the budget?
(two literal meanings plus the ironic
one)

• But this one isn’t: (except ironically)

When did the president say how he
would balance the budget?
 What is linguistics (again)?
• Scientific study of language
• When you say you know English, what is it
that you know?
• You know a system
• Set of rules
• Even if you can’t describe it explicitly
• Doesn’t mean that a set of rules is the
best (or only) way to describe it
 What is language?
• Communicative
• Arbitrary (symbols don’t have intrinsic
meaning)
• Structured (rule-governed)
• Generative (can say creative new things,
not just fixed list)
• Dynamic (constantly growing and
changing)
 Where does language fit
in the brain?
• Problems caused by brain injury
• Aphasia = inability to speak
• Broca’s aphasia = can understand but
not speak
• So understanding and speech
production must come from
(somewhat) different parts of the brain
• Broca’s area = lower portion of left
frontal lobe
 Language & Brain (2)
• Wernicke’s aphasia
• Keep talking but it doesn’t make sense
• Rate, intonation and stress sound
normal
• Also have problems with reading and
writing
• Wernicke’s area = part of back of left
hemisphere
• Get help immediately if someone you know
is having a stroke!
• Better to be safe than sorry
• “Golden hour”
• FAST = face, arms (& legs), speech,
time
• Vision, walking, balance
• Often on one side of the body
 Can animals master
language?
• Animals don’t have the vocal apparatus
• But is that relevant?
• So let’s try sign language
• ASL (American Sign Language) is a
language
• Several experiments with chimpanzees
• They can learn signs
• But not structure
• E.g., nested sentences
 Areas of Linguistics
• Syntax: the structure of sentences
• See examples above
• Semantics: the meanings of words and
sentences
• If we know Pat is a bachelor, then we
know Pat is male and Pat is not
married
• Is the Pope a bachelor?
• Phonology: the sound system of the
language
• “blick” could be an English word
• “mlick” and “ngick” could not
 Areas of Linguistics
• Morphology: how words are put together
• Two opposite meanings of
“unbuttonable”
• Words have structure just like
sentences
• Pragmatics: language use in context
• See examples above
• “Can you pass the salt?”

• Many complex interactions among the

components
• E.g., what causes “accent”
• E.g., “natural” word order
What we study in linguistics
• Structure of the system
• What are the levels?
• Ways to represent the rules
• How it originates
• All children learn language
• ... without being explicitly taught
• And no animals do
• What is the structure of the mind?
• ... that it can learn language so rapidly
• What do languages have in common?
• ... and what do no languages have?
• Just accidental, or is there a reason?
• Competence vs. performance
• Competence = the system (what you
know)
• Performance = the execution (what you
do at any given time)
 What linguists don’t study
• Prescriptive grammar
• Prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar
• Is there one true grammar?
• See Bryson for examples
• Linguistics is scientific study of language
• Botanists don’t tell us what a daisy
should look like