1

Welcome to Ming Chuan University!

2

Introduction to Linguistics

Teacher: Simon Smith ( 史尚明 )– “Dr Smith”, “Simon” or “ 老師” : OK– “Smith” or “Teacher”: not OK

This semester’s course: – the basics of linguistic analysis

» the sounds of languages» the structure of sentences and individual words» the study of meaning.

3

About me…

I first came to Taiwan in 1991 BA in Linguistics and Chinese, Leeds MSc in Machine Translation, Manchester PhD in Statistical Language Modeling, Bir

mingham Post-doctoral year at Academia Sinica This is my third year at Ming Chuan

4

Why study Linguistics? Linguistics: related to your English studies But also a science

– The scientific study of language You will get a good grasp of linguistic principles You will understand more about how languages (including

English and Chinese) work. Linguistics asks such questions as

– How did language begin?– Why is it easy for kids to learn their first language, but difficult

for adults?– What exactly is language?

» That one, we begin to answer next week!

5

Why take this course? It’s taught (mostly) in English

– Your English reading, writing, listening and speaking will all improve

It’s taught in a Western way: you will– think critically– discuss issues with classmates and teacher– question what classmates, teacher and even famous linguists say

You will learn to– describe your own ideas, and others’ ideas, in a logical way, by

giving a presentation to the class– write a medium-length essay, in the Western tradition (probably

not until next semester)

6

Course grades In-class or homework

exercises every two weeks or so

Quizzes will be announced in advance: probably there will be two

Midterms and finals will take place in class time (if the university gives me permission!)

7

Course grades Presentations

– you will research one language on the web or in the library, and give a short talk

– You cannot choose English, Mandarin or Taiwanese

– If you want to choose a language, tell me soon

– I will give more information later

Class performance– Attitude– Attendance– Contribution to discussion

8

Class rules Attendance is mandatory

– Assistant class leader please take attendance at break time– More than 4 missed classes (whether for sickness, sports, laziness,

病假 , 公假 , or any reason) – 0%! If you arrive late, you must apologize and explain the reas

on Please don’t eat hot food Please switch off your phone Please don’t chatter while I’m speaking Work only on class material during class time

9

Class website

http://mcu.edu.tw/~ssmith Here you will find

– These PowerPoint slides– Syllabus, recommended reading and websites– Your grades

» Check grades on-line after quizzes and exercises are returned to you

10

Textbook

Yule, The Study of Language (Cambridge, 2006)

There should be enough copies in the store You must buy a copy You must bring it next week and every

week

11

Course syllabusWeeks 1 - 2 Introduction, What is language?

Weeks 3 - 5 The structure of words: Morphology

Weeks 6-8 The sounds of language: Phonetics & Phonology

Week 9 Midterm exam in class

Week 10 University mid-terms: no class this week

Weeks 11-13 The structure of sentences: Syntax

Weeks 14-16 The study of meaning: Semantics

Week 17 Final exam in class

12

Next semester:

We will look at some other topics– Psycholinguistics– Sociolinguistics– Computational linguistics– Corpus linguistics

There are a lot of flavors of linguistics!

13

But this semester…

We’ll look at the different linguistic strata (layers)

Phonetics Phonology

Sounds of language

Linguistics

Grammar

Morphology Syntax

Meaning

Semantics Pragmatics

14

我覺得這個教室太熱 ! A standard way to express this phonetically

– ㄨㄛˇ ㄐㄩㄝˊ ㄉㄜ˙ ㄓㄜˋ ㄍㄜ˙ㄐㄧㄠˋ ㄕˋ ㄊㄞˋ ㄖㄜˋ

Another way, using Hanyu Pinyin– wo3 jue2 de5 zhe4 ge5 jiao4 shi4 tai4 re4

In phonetics terms, this utterance (=sentence) contains – vowels (like ㄜ )– and consonants (like ㄉ )

There are also semivowels (like ㄨ ) And there are diphthongs ( ㄧㄠ , ㄞ ) And there is information about the tone (=pitch)

15

我覺得這個教室太熱 ! - morphology

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning– 教 and 室 have meanings (although 室 is not normal

ly used independently as a word)– so, 教 and 室 are morphemes– and they can be put together to form a word: 教室

If the utterance had been 我們覺得…– we would say that 我們 has two morphemes, 我 and

們– 們 is called a plural morpheme

16

我覺得這個教室太熱 ! - syntax

We can also say– 這個教室 , 我覺得太熱 !

I don’t think we can really say– ? 我把這個教室覺得太熱 , because it sounds very strange

And we certainly can’t say something like– * 我覺得太熱這個教室 , although we might understand it if some

one said it But if someone said

– * 教室這個 , 太熱覺得我 , we would probably have no idea what they were talking about

This is because of syntactic rules governing Mandarin.

17

And now, a semantic example You can choose different words, and get more or l

ess the same meaning– Like 好熱 , or 非常熱 , or 熱得不得了

But some lexical choices (=possible words) are not available:

– 我覺得這 (* 位 ) 教室太熱– 我覺得這個教室太 (* 燙 )– This is because the classifier 位 selects a human noun– And because 燙 modifies substances like liquids, not spaces like

rooms

18

In pragmatics 我覺得這個教室太熱 ! Is it only a comment on the temperature? Or does it really mean something like

– Please can you turn the air-conditioning on? In English, I’m not sure can mean No

– And 我可能不去 generally means “I’m not going” Pragmatics tells us to look beyond the sentence t

o find the real meaning

19

In your free time

Look at the diagram again, and try to understand it.

Phonetics Phonology

Sounds of language

Linguistics

Grammar

Morphology Syntax

Meaning

Semantics Pragmatics

20

And take a look at 分支学科 On this website

– http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%AF%AD%E8%A8%80%E5%AD%A6%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5

» Get some practice reading simplified Chinese!

And read about Animals and Human Languages” in Chapter 2 of your book.

21

Introducing Linguistics

What do linguists do? Grammar, and other aspects of language Relationships between languages How is linguistics used in the real world?

22

What do linguists do? They don’t necessarily “learn languages”

– Linguist and 語言學 are confusing terms They are often interested in the structure of

languages. They might– specialize in one language, or a group of langua

ges– compare different languages– study features shared by all languages

23

Many linguists study grammar Syntax

– the way words are arranged to make sentences– John had lunch / *John lunch had

Morphology– the way words are modified to fit the circumstances– John had lunch / *John have lunch

Linguists study– what people actually say– not what they “should” say!

24

The sort of things linguists look at in syntax

Syntax (the way words are arranged to make sentences)– John saw the girl with the telescope– 爸爸給小明買鹹蛋超人

25

And in morphology… Affixation: hardly used in Chinese

– My son has 73 Ultramen– 我 (? 的 ) 兒子有 73 只鹹蛋超人 (* 們 )

Compounding– rare in English: greenhouse, blackbird– productive in Chinese

» Verb-object compounds: 開車 , 幫忙» Resultative compounds: 來得及 , 跑不掉» Stump compounds: 交大

26

Phonology: the sounds of a language

Has 台灣國語 lost the sounds ㄓㄔㄕ ? Why do we sometimes hear

– ㄧ、ㄦˋ 、ㄕㄢ、ㄕˋ ?

27

Historical linguistics How languages are related

– Language families» Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan…

– Areal linguistics» Greek, Bulgarian

– Mostly borrowed words; also shared grammatical features» Chinese, Korean, Japanese

How language changes over time– sounds: poor vs paw, suit. – vocab: 咖啡 , 颱風 . Calque: 摩天大樓 , skyscraper, gratte-ciel– grammar: Did you eat yet? Adversative passive 被

28

Sociolinguistics Diglossia: “high” and “low” prestige languages

– The role of Mandarin and Taiwanese in a bilingual society

– The changing role of English in Taiwan society: borrowing, or showing off?

– case and size: code-switching, or lexicalized Chinese words?

Ta-hsüeh-shih-ching Ta-hsüeh-shih-ching Ta-hsüeh-shih-ching

29

Applications for linguistics Speech disorders Forensic linguistics

– Accent detection– Style verification (eg police style)

Language teaching Computational applications

– Machine translation– Speech recognition and synthesis– Language identification