LING1000

• Design features of human language

  • Arbitrariness
  • Syntax
  • Discreteness
  • Displacement
  • Tradition
• Arbitrariness


  Words are arbitrary and don't have any real relationship to the thing they refer to. Their meanings are not predictable from their forms and their forms are not predictable from their meanings.
• Arbitrariness


  • nyinbu (in the Australian language Garrwa) and echidna (in English) refer to the same spiky Australian animal
• Syntax


  The ability to take arbitrary units, put them together, and get a more complex meaning
• Syntax


  • the dog is on the rug means something different to the word dog on its own. And the dog is on the rug means something different to the rug is on the dog, even though both sentences use the same words.
• Discreteness


  We are able to process a continuous stream of speech as different, discrete words, with each word having its own separate meaning
• Discreteness


  • If you hear 'the cat sat', you could break that up into the units 'the', 'cat' and 'sat'
• Displacement


  The ability to convey a message about things that are remote in space or time
• We can use language to talk about other places or times, or things that have never happened
• Tradition


  Particular human languages are passed on through generations, and variation that develops in languages is also passed on to the next generation, leading to languages diverging and new varieties and languages being created
• We don't have to learn how to scream, cry or laugh, but we do have to learn language
• Reflectiveness


  The ability to communicate about the language system itself
• No animal (other than humans) is able to use language to talk about language
• Design features of human language

  • Arbitrariness
  • Syntax
  • Discreteness
  • Displacement
  • Tradition
  • Reflectiveness
• Human signed languages, such as Auslan, have the design features of human language, just like spoken languages
• Syntactic objects


  Something that "gets" hit or "gets" frightened or "is" seen
• Morphology


  Patterns in the forms of the words
• Syntax


  The way words are arranged in sentences
• Defining word classes based on their meaning is called a semantic definition, but semantic definitions are not efficient for quickly and accurately identifying which word class a particular word belongs to
• A more consistent way to find words that group together is to test which grammatical category words belong to by looking at what units these words can be made up of (their morphological properties), and what other words they can combine with (their syntactic properties)
• Names of grammatical categories in English

  • Nouns
  • Verbs
  • Adjectives
  • Adverbs
  • Pronouns
  • Determiners
  • Prepositions
  • Auxiliary verbs
  • Coordinators
  • Subordinators
• Tests to identify grammatical categories

  • Is "guard" an adjective?
  • Is "guard" a noun?
• Open class words are 'open' in the sense that new words can be added to them easily
• Open word classes in English

  • Nouns
  • Verbs
  • Adjectives
  • Adverbs
• Closed class words are words where it is unusual for new words to be added to these categories
• Closed word classes in English

  • Pronouns
  • Prepositions
  • Determiners
  • Auxiliary verbs
  • Coordinators
  • Subordinators
• Content words


  Words in open classes that contribute rich and varied meanings
• Function words


  Words in closed classes that have particular grammatical functions
• Morphosyntactic tests for nouns

  • Many nouns pluralise
  • Count and mass nouns can occur alone in the syntactic frame Det (Adj) ___
  • All nouns can occur in the context Det ____ V
• Morphosyntactic tests for lexical verbs


  • Take the present participle –ing suffix, the past-tense suffix -ed, and the third person singular present –s suffix
  • Can occur alone in the context Aux NP ____?
• Morphosyntactic tests for adjectives

  • Most can take the comparative suffix –er and the superlative suffix –est
  • Most can take the suffix –ly and become an adverb
  • Words ending in the suffix -ish are adjectives
  • Most can occur alone in the context (Det) Noun is _____
• Morphosyntactic tests for adverbs

  • Most have the form adjective –ly
  • Most can occur alone in the context sentence ____
• Degree adverbs occur before adjectives or other adverbs to express the degree to which an adjective or adverb applies
• It is often easier to memorise all the words of a particular closed class type, rather than using tests
• Morphological tests for pronouns

  • Have different forms for person and case
  • Like count nouns, personal pronouns have different forms for number (singular, plural)
• Pronoun forms


  • Nominative (subject)
  • Accusative (object)
  • Genitive (possessive)
  • Reflexive
• Types of determiners in English

  • Article: the, a(n)
  • Demonstrative: this (plural: these), that (plural: those)
  • Possessives: its, his, my
  • Universal: all, both
  • Distributive: each, every
  • Existential: some, any
  • Quantifiers: much, many, lots of
  • Cardinal numbers: one, two, three….
• Determiners indicate whether a noun phrase is definite or indefinite
• The and a/an are the definite and indefinite articles
• Have and do are used as both auxiliary and lexical verbs