Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol

Back up your computers

• If your hard drive or computer failed tomorrow, what would you do?

• Keep a copy of important non-private documents on Google Drive or iCloud

• Buy an external drive and backup your whole machine

  • Time Machine on Mac, Windows Backup on PC

  • Or Backblaze, rsync, restic, etc

• Seriously, your computer will likely die while you’re at UCSD, be prepared

Morphology 2, and English is Drunk

LIGN 101 - Will Styler

Today’s Plan

• How do languages generally make words? (Morphological Type)

• Inflection vs. Derivation

• Where to draw the line between morphology and phonology?

• Go home, English, you’re drunk

Do languages differ in how they like to build their words?

• Of course!

Morphological Type

Morphological Type

A means of categorizing how languages put words together

• This is useful for comparing word-building strategies across languages

We care about two “dimensions” of morphological type:

• Do words have lots of morphemes or few?

• If they have multiple morphemes, do they blend together, or are they easy to pick apart?

Do words have lots of morphemes or few?

• If words have few morphemes (like English or Chinese), they’re “isolating”

• If they have many (like Spanish or German), they’re “synthetic”

  • Languages where whole sentences are single words are sometimes called “polysynthetic”

English
IE:Germanic - All over

I did see the cat on the street, he’s cute.

I did see DEF cat on DEF street he-be.3sg cute.

• Only one morpheme in most words! This is Isolating!

Russian
IE:Slavic - Russian

Ti uhodila so mnoi

Ti u-hodi-la so mnoi

2sg.NOM away-go.IMPERF-past.FEM with 1sg.INST

“You left with me”

• This is looking more synthetic!

Spanish
IE:Italic - All over

Esta escribiéndomelo

be.3sg write-GER-1sg.DAT-3sg.MASC

‘He/she is writing it to me.’

• Lots of morphemes per word! This is Synthetic!

Turkish
Turkic - Turkey

• Whoa, that’s a lot of morphemes. Synthetic!

Turkish
Turkic - Turkey

• OK Turkish, now you’re just showing off…

German
IE:Germanic - Germany

Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

Donau-dampf-schiff-fahrts-elektrizitäten-haupt-betriebs-werk-bau-unter-beamten-gesellschaft

Danube-steam-ship-transport’s-electricities-head-operation’s-work-building-under-officials-association

Wichita
Caddoan - Oklahoma

Kiyakiicíwa:cé:hirʔasʔirhawi

‘There was the big buffalo lying there.’

• Uh… yeah. This is polysynthetic!

It’s always a continuum

• English is isolating, but Mandarin is more isolating

• Few languages are as polysynthetic as Wichita, but that’s OK!

Morphological Type - Review!

• If a language has few morphemes per word, it’s isolating

• If the language has multiple morphemes per word, it’s synthetic

So far, we’ve been talking about building new words

• “How do I create a new word that I can use in a sentence?”

This is called ‘Derivational Morphology’

Derivational Morphology

• Attaching affixes that change the part of speech of the root, or change something important about the meaning

• The meaning changes don’t apply to all words, and are sometimes unpredictable

Examples of Derivational Morphology

• control (verb) -> controllable (adjective)

• amaze (verb) -> amazement (noun)

• joy (noun) -> joyful (adjective)

• teach (verb) -> teacher (noun)

• roll (verb) -> unroll (verb)

• write (verb) -> rewrite (verb)

• fair (adjective) -> unfair (adjective)

Inflectional Morphology

• Inflectional morphology predictably changes the meaning of the word in the sentence, but doesn’t change the part of speech or meaning of the whole word in a deep way.

• Inflectional morphology is often added at the time of speaking

Examples of Inflectional Morphology in English

• cat -> cats (-s plural marker)
• we sing -> he sings (-s 3rd person singular marker)
• he walks -> he walked (-ed 3sg past tense marker)

Inflectional Morphology around the World

Khanty (Western Siberia)

xot ‘house’

• xot-yyn ‘two houses (dual)’

• xot-yt ‘houses (plural)’

Russian (Transliterated)

• Devushk-a videt sobak-u

  • The girl sees the dog

• Devushk-u videt sobak-a

  • The dog sees the girl

• This is a case system. We’ll hopefully talk more about those later.

Somali

• xoola-hayga ‘my herd’

• xoola-haaga ‘your herd’

• xoola-heeda ‘her herd’

• xooli-hiisa ‘his herd’

Spanish

• Habl-o ‘I speak (Present tense)’

• Habl-as ‘You speak (Present tense)’

• Habl-a ‘He/She/It speaks (Present tense)’

• Habl-amos ‘We speak (Present tense)’

• Habl-ais ‘Y’all speak (Present tense)’

• Habl-an ‘They speak (Present tense)’

English: “Mom, can we stop and get inflectional morphology?”

• Mom: “We have inflectional Morphology at home”

Inflectional morphology at home:

So, we have derivational and inflectional morphology

• Derivational morphology is used to build new words

• Inflectional morphology changes their meanings in predictable ways in sentences

• The line between these can get blurry in some cases

• Most languages do a bit of each!

Now, for something completely different

Language Warning

• We discuss Language

  • All of it

• We may discuss taboo subjects, words, constructions, or concepts

• It’s all meant to further academic pursuits

• Please come talk to me if you have any concerns.

Go home English, you’re drunk

LING 101 - Will Styler

“Why can’t these immigrants just learn English?!?”

“Uh, have you looked at English lately??”

Nearly every part of this language is completely bizarre.

• Non-Native Speakers: You know the deal.

Let’s look at this from an outsider’s perspective

The Sound System

/ɹ/eally?

• Very few languages use /ɹ/

  • Mandarin Chinese shares this crazy

• We’ve got a bunch of ways to make it

Intonation

The prosody, or pitch and timing you use, matters a lot

• “I had Five Guys for lunch yesterday.”

• “Let’s eat, Grandma!”

• “I’m so sorry to hear about your exam score”

• List intonation

Vocabulary

English has done a lot of theft

English

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

French

Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits. Ils sont doués de raison et de conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres dans un esprit de fraternité.

On the ‘Purity’ of the English language…

“We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” –James D. Nicoll

No language is an island

• Most languages borrow terms from elsewhere

• (but English is a thug)

  • … and ‘thug’ is a loanword from Hindi!

The Writing System

Ghoti

Ghoti

• “gh” from “rough”

• “o” from “women”

• “ti” from “action”

• Pronounced like “Fish”

Knight

Then, we use these sounds to do silly things in the rest of the language

Ablaut

Some English verbs change vowels to get their past tense

• Sing -> Sang
• Ring -> Rang
• Bring -> Brought
• Sting -> Stung
• Ding -> Dinged
• Smite -> Smote
• Bite -> Bit
• Yeet -> Yote?

Prepositions

I’ve got a conference [at/in] the Price Center

• I’ve got a conference at Indiana

• I’ve got a conference at Indianapolis

• I’ve got a conference at the Marriott in Indianapolis

WTF?

I’ve got a meeting on Friday

• I’ve got a meeting in August

• I’ve got a meeting at 3pm

• I’ve got a meeting during lunch

• I’ve got a meeting ø next week

I saw her last night.

• I saw her last morning.

• I saw her last afternoon.

• I saw her last evening.

• I saw her last sunrise.

• I saw her yesterday afternoon.

• I saw her yesterday night.

Am I getting my point to/through/by/across to you?

• I’m no good at/when/for explaining these things in/at/through lectures.

Plurality

Fish.

Fish.

Fishes.

Leaf -> Leaves

• Wife -> Wives

• Staff -> ??

The plural of “staff” is…

1. Staffs (rhymes with “graphs”)

2. Staffs (rhymes with “calves”)

3. Staves (rhyme with “caves”)

4. Stife (because English.)

Staffs

Staves

Mouse -> Mice

• Louse -> Lice

• House -> Hice

• Spouse -> …

I guess you could say polygamy adds spice to life!

(This is a language pun, not advocacy for or against any particular relationship structure)

Count vs. Mass nouns

• I have a car

  • This is a “count noun”

• *I have a sand.

  • This is a “mass noun”

• I ate an asparagus

• I ate a french fry

Count nouns can be treated like mass nouns

• I saw a raccoon on the road

• I saw some raccoons on the road

• I saw some raccoon on the road

Speaking of dead animals…

I have cow with English

What’d you have for dinner?

• I had cow.
  • Needs to be “beef”
• I had pig.
  • “Pork”
• I had deer
  • “Venison”
• I had sheep
  • “Mutton”
  • … but lamb?
• I had chicken.

Animals are count nouns, foods are mass nouns

• I hugged three pigs, *I ate three porks

• I bought some cows, I bought some beef

• I bought some chickens, I ate some chicken

• I ate some chickens

(Yet, Will has several beefs with Michael Bay)

• Beeves?

Affixes

English has lots of prefixes and suffixes

• i-
  • As in “iPhone”, “iPad”, “iMac”, “iDock”, “iBrator”
• -sauce
  • As in “sadsauce”, “awesomesauce”, ?“concisesauce”, ?“pedanticsauce”
• -holic/-holism
  • As in “alcoholic”, “chocoholic”, “workaholic”, “enchiladaholism”, ?“phonologoholic”

What affixes can attach to what words?

… and their meanings can be really odd

• “John works at Art of Espresso. He’s a coffee grinder.”

• “Mark has retired three times now. He’s a serial retirer.”

• “I just downloaded a new YouTube app. It’s a great YouTuber.”

• “Mark builds armor, he’s an armorer. Steven builds hooks, he’s a …”

… but it has exactly one infix

Infix

A affix which is inserted into the middle of the word

Will I tell you what it is?

• Abso-fucking-lutely

“Fucking” is the only infix in the English language

• … and it has very strict rules where it can go

Add a -fucking- infix to the word “constitutional”

1. Cons-fucking-titutional

2. Consti-fucking-tutional

3. Constitu-fucking-tional

4. Constitution-fucking-al

Expletives must occur immediately prior to the stressed syllable

• “Missi-fucking-sippi”

  • *Miss-fucking-isippi

• “He’s a deon-fucking-tologist”

• “Antidisestablishmen-fucking-tarianism”

It’s time to talk about these issues

It

It ate my homework

• It’s getting hot in here

• It burns when I eat Habañeros

• It sucks when Michael Bay remakes your childhood favorites

• It’s about time we fix our writing system

Expletive ‘it’

• Contributes nothing to the meaning of the sentence

  • … but does serve a syntactic role

• “It” is a subject for sentences where there’s no subject at all

Shouldn’t we do something about that?

• Which means the same thing as “Should we do something about that?”

  • Go home English, you’re drunk.

    • (Shouldn’t that be “drinked”)?

I give up

• Speaking of which…

Verb particle constructions

Verb Particle Constructions

When a verb has a different meaning when coupled with a particular preposition or particle

Cut - to slice

• Cut in - To offer somebody a part of a venture

• Cut out - To stop something, or remove somebody from a venture, or lose audio

• Cut with - To adulterate a drug

• Cut off - To cease financial support, or merge leaving too little space

  • … or remove a smaller part than the whole

• Cut it - To suffice for a task

Cut continued

• Cut up - To slice into small pieces

• Cut down - To shorten something

• Cut across/through - To shorten one’s route by traversing an open space

• Cut on - To repeatedly make small cutting strokes at the periphery of an object

• Cut back - To reduce an existing option or investment, travel back in story

Sometimes, we don’t know if we want the verb particle construction, or the preposition!

Cut up the center of the fabric

Cut up the center of the fabric

These differences can have major consequences

“Jackie stole my lunchbox…”

• “… then she threw my lunch up on the roof”

• “… then she threw up my lunch on the roof”

We have other particles

The ‘to’ in ‘to go’

• Apparently, syntacticians have punted on this and call it a ‘particle’

• In computational linguistics, we just call it ‘to’ and wash our hands of it

• Either way, it’s going to cause problems

  • Like ‘it’

Then there’s the really crazy stuff

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

• This is a fully grammatical sentence

  • Buffalo NY, Buffalo (the animal), and the verb “buffalo” (to bully)

• “New York bison whom other New York bison bully, themselves bully New York bison”.

Will, will Will will Will Will’s will?

• Also fully grammatical English

  • Will (being addressed), will (future) Will (a person) will (bequeath) Will (another person) Will’s will (a document).

It’s not just English!

English happens to be absolutely insane

• It’s filled with irregularities, weirdnesses, odd constructions, and other silliness

• … but that’s no different than any other language.

All languages are crazy!

• We’re simplifying languages left and right for this class

  • Partly because we don’t have the time

  • … and because if we didn’t, you’d run screaming

The Tibetan Writing system is even worse than English’s

The Real Russian Case System

Spanish Verbal Hell

… and that craziness is why linguists love language so much!

Wrapping up

• English is bat-poop cray-cray, in so many ways

  • (Partly because you understood that sentence)

• … but so is every other language

• That’s why we love them

• Second language learners are fighting an uphill battle. Be kind!

Thank you!