The Origins of Language

 CHAPTER 10:  Pragmatics Invisible Meaning How we recognize what is meant even when it is not actually said or written. Context Our interpretation of the “meaning” of the sign is not based solely on the words, but on what we think the writer intended to communicate. Deixis Expressions such as tomorrow and here are technically known as deictic.We use deixis to point to people (us, them, those idiots), places (here, over there) and times (now, last week). Reference An act by which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader) to identify something. Inference An inference is additional information used by the listener to create a connection between what is said and what must be meant. Anaphora Ex: We saw a funny home video about a boy washing a puppy in a small bath.        The puppy started struggling and shaking and the boy got really wet.        When he let go, it jumped out of th...

 CHAPTER 9 :Semantics Meaning Semantics is the study of meaning in language, there is more interest in certain aspects of meaning than in others Ex: needle  “thin, sharp, steel instrument”  This sentence is syntactically good, but semantically odd. Semantic Features We can then use this idea to describe part of the meaning of words as having either plus (+) or minus (–) that particular feature. Words as Containers of Meaning The approach just outlined is a start on analyzing the basic components of word meaning,but it is not without problems. For many words in a language it may not be as easy to come up with neat components of meaning. If we try to think of the components or features we would use to differentiate the nouns advice, threat and warning, for example, we may not be very successful. Part of the problem seems to be that the approach involves a view of words in a language as some sort of “containers” that carry meaning components. This approach seems to be too re...

 CHAPTER 8: Syntax Syntactic rules To analysis for all the grammatically correct phrases and sentences and only those grammatically correct phrases and sentences in whatever language are analyzing. A Generative Grammar rule:“a prepositional phrase in English consists of a preposition followed by a noun phrase,” Deep and Surface Structure - Surface structure:the different syntactic forms they have as individual English sentences. - Deep structure:is an abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining structural interpretation are represented. Structural Ambiguity When a sentence has different meaning represented differently in deep structure Ex: “Annie had an umbrella and she bumped into a man with it.”       “Annie bumped into a man and the man happened to be carrying an umbrella.” Syntactic Analysis In syntactic analysis we use some conventional abbreviations for the parts of speech identified Ex: N (= nou...

 CHAPTER 7     GRAMMAR English Grammar English has strict rules for combining words into phrases. The article (the) must go before the adjective (lucky), which must go before the noun (boys). article + adjective + noun (and not *noun + article + adjective, for example). Traditional Grammar Since there was a well-established grammatical description of Latin, based on earlier analyses of Greek, it seemed appropriate to adopt the existing categories from this description and apply them in the analysis of newer languages such as English. The Parts of Speech -Nouns refer to people, objects, creatures, places, qualities, phenomena, abstract ideas -Articles (a, an, the) -Adjectives provide more information about the things referred to -Verbs actions  -Adverbs provide more information about actions, states and events -Prepositions (at, in, on, near, with, without) -Pronouns (she, herself, they, it, you) -Conjunction...