Summary 1 Introduction:
Organisation, signs, langauge families
Today’s class predominantly covered organizational aspects of the lecture. We were informed about different requirements depending on the needed LPs, about the tutorial, the web portfolio and briefly about the content of the single units. The second part of the introductory lecture dealt with texts as signs and properties of a text. Some more details to these aspects can be found in the category “quizzes”.
As a transitional aspect to next week’s topic (History and distribution of English), we had a brief look on some maps to compare the different distribution as well as speed and reasons for expansion of languages of the world and indigenous languages.
Illustration 1: The Germanic languagesThe French influence on the English language during the Norman Conquest was quite an interesting topic we briefly talked about. During that time, the upper class rather used French vocabulary to distinguish themself. English grammar was less affected by French language influency.
The Indo-European expansion originated in the Caucasus. There are some evidences for Indo-European “mother” language and culture:
a) similarities in technologies
b) similarities in social stratification: A three tiered society with a royalty, the military as well as workers and farmers.
c) words shared by related languages (e.g. on animals, food, natural environment)
The Celts were the earliest known inhabitants of the British Isles who migrated East and West from Danube. They can be divided into tow branches:
1. The Goidelic Celtics: Today we know the Gaelic language in the area of West of Ireland and North-West Scotland
2. The Brythonic Celtic: Today we are familiar with Welsh, which is spoken in Wales as well as in Breton and is re-introduced to European mainland from Wales and Cornwall.
During the West and North Germanic migration the Roman influence declined. The West Germanic (after about 400 AD) are the Angles and Saxons, the North Germanic (after about 600 AD) are the Vikings and the Norman French are French speaking descendants. An example for two words which have the same origin are “skirt” (Anglo-Saxon) and “shirt” (Vikings).
Having a closer look at the British Celts and a number of names, it is surprising how many names have Celtic origin. Some examples are:
- brocc – “badger” – Brock the Badger
- luh – “lake” – loch, lough
- bin – “basket, crib” – bin
Although they expressions are nonsense for people nowadays, some Celtic words also survived in children’s’ counting rhymes or in place names.
But how can Linguists know about all this interesting findings? To figure this kind of relations out, it is necessary to compare different languages. There are certain criteria to examine the etymology of words (the relationship between sounds and meaning). Similarities can occur because the languages
- descended from the same language
- have been in contact with each other (e.g for military or religious reason)
- share universal properties of all languages
- have accidental similarities
- or any combination of these reasons
According to the extend of differences and similarities it is possible to group them in a tree diagram.
Doing a lot of research on the history of words (etymology), historical changes over time have been discovered and named. First of all there is Grimm ’s Law. According to this, three major changes can be determined: Desperation (e.g. *bh – *b; *dh – *d; *gh – *g), devoicing (*b – *p; *d – *t; *g – *k), fricativisation (*p – *f; *t – *ө; *k – *h).
We skipped Varner’s Law and talked in more detail about the High German Sound Shift. The obstruent consonants shifted as followed:
- p: pf - f
- t: ts – s
- k: k (kx) – x/Ç
We did not have time to talk about the important Great Vowel Shift or some semantic changes, as there are generalisation, specialisation and metaphor.
Illustration 2: The Great Vowel Shift
The acoustic domain tries to describe how sounds are transmitted. Therefore the time domain (speech wave-form) and the frequency domain (spectral analysis) is used.
Last but not least the auditory domain focuses on the reception of sounds and analyses the way of sound waves through the ear.
Evaluation:
I was not aware that we should also write an evalution. That is the reason why I have not posted one before.Today’s lesson was very complex and covered major fields of linguistics. Since I learned quite a lot for my “How to handle Speech” class, I was sill very familiar with the topic. But I could imagine that someone who has not come across the topic neither in German studies nor in British and American studies could have had a hard time to follow. It was nice to pronouncing different sound on to become aware of the actual position where that happens and how parts of our mouth changes in order to produce different sounds.
We actually spent some more time on talking about the source-filter model belonging to the domain of acoustic phonetics. There are two kinds of sources: the resonant source (larynx) and the noise sources (constrictions) which produce predominantly fricatives. The voiceless fricatives combine both. Then the sounds pass the pharyngeal filter (throat) and afterwards either the nasal or the oral filter. A common way of displaying speech is the speech waveform. The x-axis display the time, the y-axes shows the amplitude; how loud a sound is. A different way of making speech visible is the spectral transform (spectrogram). It helps you to figure out which frequencies are involved. The computer program “PRAAT” helps you to analyze speech yourself. You can download it for free on the website http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/. After a little bit of playing around with some sound examples you can get quite familiar with the program. We did so during our “How to handle speech” class. 
Illustration 5: The ear
Last but not least we also talked about auditory phonetics. This area of phonetics may be the one which is most difficult to be investigated. The ear is divided into the outer, middle and inner ear. The outer ear functions as a microphone and collects sounds from a large surrounding area. The middle ear is an amplifier while the inner ear, namely the cochlear acts as a frequency analyzer.
The sound waves reach the outer ear: The pinna collects the sound waves from the area around. Then they pass the outer ear canal and deflects the eardrum. While it is transmitted via the auditory ossicles (hammer, anvil, stirrup), the sound gets transformed into mechanical movement. The stirrup touches the oval window, the entrance to the inner ear: The cochlea. The Cochlea is filled with liquid and divided by two membranes. The basilar membrane is very important. On its stiffer end it is sensible to higher frequencies, compared to the more flexible end (lower frequencies). Along the membrane you can find the organ of corti. Tinny little hair cells transmit neural signal through the auditory nerve to the brain, where the sound gets interpreted.
Evaluation:
I appreciate the repetition phase during the first half of the lecture. Although we covered most of the topics already, we also mentioned some new aspects or gave different and more plausible examples and explanations. It is also a nice way to loosen the situation and wake everybody up. I think it is the best way of dealing with so many students which makes a real seminar impossible.
Since I have intensively dealt with the topic (and also with PRAAT) in the “How to handle speech” class, it was a nice repetition and a good feeling to be already familiar with phonetics.
2007-11-21
Summary 6
The structure of words: morphology (word formation)
After we briefly discussed the concept of harmonics and formats, we came to today’s topic: morphology. The first half of the lecture we talked about Thorsten Trippel’s slights and than continued with Dafydd Gibbon’s presentation.
There are different word formation possibilities. The easiest solution is a simplex word (e.g. cup). The second possibility is a derived word, which may be recognized by an added affix. A compound word actually consists of two originally separate words (e.g. cupboard). We also tried to define the word “word”. That can be done in different ways:
- A word is the smallest unit of a sentence (external structure)
- A word can be a simplex one, a derived one or a compound word (internal structure)
- A word is pronounced with speech sounds (rendering)
- A word carries meaning (content)
- A word is a string of letters separated by space
- A word consists of one or more morphemes
- A word is e.g. “cat”, “fly”, “the”, “car”….
Morphology is the linguistic discipline which is concerned with the study of the formation of words. A morpheme is the smallest unit of a language carrying meaning. It gets encoded by phonemes. A word may consist of one or more morphemes. You may differentiate between free morphemes (they may form a single word: e.g. girl, table), bound morphemes, which can only occur in connection with other morphemes (e.g. -s,-ing, - ize) or allomorphs, which are variations of a morpheme (e.g. the different realizations of the plural s according to the environment). While simple words only consists of one morpheme as the name already indicates (e.g. blue, stick, book), complex words contain at least two morphemes (e.g. raincoat, cups, walked).
With the help of a list of words we tried to identify all morphemes that form a word (e.g. follow-ing, word-s, find, identif-y, ma-be).
A word has a certain structure. The root is the basic element which carries the meaning (e.g. unbelievable: believe). It may be changed affixes (prefix: is attached before the root; suffix: is attached after the root). The base is simply the term for the form to which an affix is attached. In German you quite often find circumfixes, which consist of two parts (geschaft) at the beginning and at the end of the word, as well as infixes. They are used to link two sepperate words and form a compound word (e.g. Liebesbrief).
After the break we first of all made a distinction between a “stem” and an “inflection”. A stem carries lexical meaning (e.g. flower, garden, sit) while an inflection has grammatical meaning. It functions as a kind of glue because on the one hand a stem relates a word to its semantic contexts (tense, quantity) and on the other hand to its syntactic context (subject-verb agreement).
Inflections in English are suffixes, which determine person, number and case. In other languages you may also find prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes (see above) or superfixes which have an inflectional function.
We can further distinguish between simple stems as there are roots and lexical morphemes, and complex stems: There are derivations which consist of a stem with a derivational affix; compounds (at least two stems) and synthetic compounds. They are formed by a stem and a derivation (e.g. bus-driver).
To conclude you can say that a word consists of a stem and an inflection (affix: prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix, superfix, ablaut). A stem may have be divided into three different kinds: It may be a compound stem consisting of two stems; it can be a derived stem (stem + affix) or it may be the root as the simplest kind of a stem.
Evaluation:
From my point of view, it was quite difficult to really get the different terminologies separated and defined, as there were different stems, word, root and base. It helped a little bit to give examples to each of them. The way of presenting them was a little confusing.
In contrast to that, it became quite clear how the different affixes and the term morpheme is defined, although it may not be the easiest thing to identify them in a word at once.
I also appreciate it that there is something like the popular “red thread” through all individual lectures and that some elements are regularly appear again (different ways of definition, the sign model…).
2007-11-28
Summary 7
The structure of words: morphology (inflection)
We reviewed a few aspects we already mentioned last week under the heading “morphology”. First of all we started with the question: What is a word? A word has the function to be the smallest meaning bearing part of a sentence. The external structure can be described as being the smallest invisible part of a sentence while the internal structure is a stem with inflection. The orthography and the phonology form the rendering.
Then we discussed the differences between German and English when it comes to inflection. Inflection is besides word-formation one major part of morphology. Inflection means that an affix is added to a stem in order to relate words to their grammatical and situational context. It does not change the meaning like the two possibilities of word-formation processes do: Derivation means that you add an affix to one derivational stem which may also change the part of speech. That is not the case when a compound is formed. Then you use two or more stems.
When we look at German nouns we identify three aspects of inflection: case (Nom.,Gen., Dat. and Akku.), number (plural and singular) and gender (f, m, n). The verb shows even more kinds of inflection, e.g. number, tense, aspect, person or passive. In English, except of the genitive, we have only two case-values, which are only shown in the pronouns and no grammatical category of gender at all. In English we can find inflexion suffices for person number and case while in other languages also prefixes, circumfixes or superfixes are common (see last week).
We used an example sentence to display how each part of the sentence influences the following part, which is shown in the suffixes:
“The car should have been being repaired.”
"The car should (modal, tense) have (aspect: perfect) been (aspect: continuous) being (passive) repaired (main verb). "
To highlight this relation even more we used the suffixes as prefixes:
"The car d + shall → 0 + have → en + be→ ing + be → ed + repaired."
It is not that easy to say how many tenses we have in English. Slightly different from the school-definition would be a distinction between form and function which would leave you with two tenses: present and past. Future would be regarded as meaning.
We continued to talk about the distinction between a stem and an inflection. A stem has lexical meaning (wonderful, blog, chair) while an inflection has grammatical meaning and is supposed to relate a word to its semantic and syntactic context.
We may also distinguish between two main morpheme types as there are lexical morphemes (content morpheme, root) and grammatical morphemes (structural morphemes). Lexical morphemes form an open group with free and bound (German) possibilities. Grammatical morphemes, on the contrast, represent a closed group also with free (e.g. preposition, conjunctions) and bound (affixes, suffices) members.
Morphemes may be realized in different ways according to their context (allomorphs). The plural or the 3rd person present singular are examples for allomorphs.
We also talked about different kind of stems. The simplest case is a simplex word stem (e.g . you, oh, milk, ma, car) while complex word stems may be differentiate even further. Derivations are based on one root although the stem itself may consist of a stem with an affix (beauty + ful +ly). Compounds are based on more than one root / stem. We have endocentric (bus-stop – a stop, but not a bus), bicentric (whisky-soda – whisky and soda) and exocentric (red-head – a person with a red-head) compounds. Synthetic compounds consist of derivation and compound (bus-driver).
At last we talked about the difficult question “When is a word a compound?”. In German you would say that it depends on the form while in English it is more a matter of meaning following a general rule that you write a new compound completely separately, when it becomes more familiar you use a hyphen and once it is very common you may write it together.
Evaluation:
It was very helpful to go through these different kinds of terminology in detail again. It makes the distinction much easier.
I also liked our discussion with the little example sentence and the comparison between German and English inflections.
2007-12-05
Summary 8
The structure of language/ syntax
We actually covered two presentations today – at least partly; both concerned with structural elements of language. Structure is determined by constitutive relations, as there are structural relations (syntagmatic and paradigmatic) and semiotic relations (realisation and interpretation). Constitutive relations are supposed to relate to the real world.
We discussed this different kinds of relation in detail because it is general concept which can be also find in the field of literature. Syntagmatic relations are combinatory relations which create larger signs (external structure) from smaller signs (internal structure). We used an example sentence to display this kind of relation:
“Susie is drinking hot chocolate.”
- Susie (subject) – is drinking hot chocolate (predicate)
- Susie (subject) – is drinking (subject verb agreement) - hot chocolate (object)
- is - drinking (determination relation); hot – chocolate (modifier)
You can split up a sentence into smaller and smaller units and determine each part and the internal relations of it.
Paradigmatic relations classify relations of similarity and difference between signs (e.g .synonyms and antonyms).
The realisation of semiotic relations is the visual appearance or acoustic representation of signs, while the interpretation means the assignment of meaning to a sign.
After talking about these concepts in general, we had a look at some examples. While “the, this, that”, “boy, girl, ape” and “swim, walks” represent paradigmatic relations within the inverted commas, choosing one of each group gives you a syntagmatic relation (e.g. the boy walks). 18 sentences are possible to formulate. You could do the same for syllables and words.
Having a look at paradigmatic relations in syntax, we tried to categorise these syntactic categories into groups, showing in a hierarchical structure. On the left side we have lexical categories with nominals (nouns and pronouns; adjectives and determinters) and verbals (main verbs and auxiliary verbs). On the right side we have a group of glue categories (prepositions, conjunctions and interjections). You could also use this kind of hierarchical tree structure to explain the individual relations of a sentence (lie the “Susie”- example) or even a syllable (onset – rhyme: nucleus, coda), but unfortunately it can’t be displayed with the limited features of my blog.
We spent the next part of the lecture with our well known sign model to apply it in a kind of a hierarchy for dialogues, texts, sentences and words. All these structures are in relation to each other and have their own form and meaning.
At this point, we switched to the second presentation and skipped the rest. We talked about different parts of speech and went through each major category in more detail. The main categories are
a) nouny categories:
- determiners (articles, possessives, demonstratives, relatives / interrogatives, quantifiers)
- adjectives (scalar, polar, appraisive, ordinal)
- nouns (proper nouns, common nouns)
- pronouns (personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns quantifier pronouns, relative pronouns)
b) verby categories
- verbs (main verbs, auxiliary verbs)
- adverbs (deictic, time, place / direction, manner, degree)
c) glue categories
- prepositions
- Conjunctions
- interjections
We finished at this part of the second presentation.
Evaluation:
I think today’s topic was very useful, especially for teachers. It is important to be familiar with different part of speech and the differences compared to German (e.g. “predicate”).
Unfortunately, it does not work to present the hierarchical tree-structures on my blog what makes it kind of difficult. So I tried to describe them.
2007-12-12
Summary 9
Syntax and Semantics
Since there was some feedback from the tutorials that students had a few problems with the concepts of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, we spent some time to talk about it in more detail:
1. Soundsystem
Paradigmatic relations:
- e.g. smaller units: similarities and differences within natural classes (e.g. plosives, fricatives…)
Syntagmatic relations:
- larger units out of smaller units: e.g. patterns for syllables (onset, rhyme: nucleus, coda)
2. Morphology
Paradigmatic relations:
- smaller units: e.g. morphemes, affixes
Syntagmatic relations:
- larger units out of smaller units: e.g. stems – complex stems
3. Sentences
Words in sentences can have different functions:
Paradigmatic relations:
- smaller units: e.g. part of speech (noun, verb…)
Syntagmatic relations:
- larger units out of smaller units: e.g. syntactic relation (object, subject…)
We kept on talking about the so called glue categories and started with prepositions. All glue categories express syntagmatic relations. Prepositions make nominal expressions into adverbial expressions. They are more or less the same category than adverbs are (except “of”).
Conjunctions are divided into co-ordinating conjunctions (e.g. and, but) and subordinating conjunctions. “And” links words of exactly the same category: you take two items of the same category and create a new item of also the same category. That is a feature of co-ordinating conjunctions.
Interjections link parts of dialogues (Hi, huh?) or are expressions of subjective reactions (ouch, wow).
To finish with the part of syntax we talked about sentences.
Since you can find an infinite number of sentences we may also define it with a recursive definition which naturally consists of three parts:
- Simplex case (base condition):
a sentence is a simple sentence
(The boy kisses the girl.)
- Complex case:
a) Coordinating sentence: a sentence is a sentence linked with a sentence by means of coordinating conjunction.
(The boy kisses the girl and the girl kisses the boy.)
b) Subordinating sentence: A sentence is a sentence with a subordinate simple sentence (clause) inserted into it, e.g. relative clause or adverbial clause.
(The boy kisses the girl because he likes her.)
- Exclusion condition:
Nothing else is a sentence.
SOV (subject-object-verb) is the basic structure of simple sentences in English and one of two options in German. XVY (verb in second position) is the second option for German. Complex sentences may contain subordinate clauses (e.g. relatives, adverbial) or coordinal clauses (with coordinating conjunctions).
After the break we started with the topic “semantics” and the familiar sign model in combination with the picture of Mr Gibbon’s famous apple pie recipe. Probably the winner of our little contest will be able to try it one day.
Actually it is not easy to say what the “meaning” of something really is and it is almost impossible to give the entire meaning of it. But it is important to keep in mind that there are at leas two different types of meanings.
a) Sense→ Chomsky: competence (implicit knowledge of a language), internal knowledge; Frege: “Sinn”
→ Something that we have in our mind what the word mean in the concept of that language
→ The conceptual, cognitive, mental domain
→ It is the combination of lexical and sentence meaning of an expression, dependent on semantic relations within the language
→ Can be defined with a standard dictionary definition.
b) Reference → Chomsky: performance (actual use of language in concrete situations), external; Frege: “Bedeutung”
→ It links to the real world.
→ The actual domain of behaviour and interaction by particular people at a given time and place.
→ The actual objects, entities, events, etc., in the world, which an expression refers to.
→ Can be defined with an ostensive definition
We may have different senses for the same thing referring to, e.g. Geor Bush, the President of the United States, Darling, Dad…. all refer to the same person / the same reference.
Afterwards we tried to find an answer to the question “What is meaning?”. Actually you can find signs of all kinds. There are verbal signs (phonemes, morphemes and words, sentences, texts, dialogues), non-verbal signs as well as signs in different modalities/ media.
We can distinguish between three types of semantic sign types.
1. Index signs have a relationship of physical proximity with its meaning (place and cause).
2. Icons have a relationship of similarity with its meaning (visual and acoustic similarity).
3. Symbols have an arbitrary relationship with its meaning.
We are going to continue with the topic next week.
Evaluation:
I think it was very helpful to clarify paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships for the three important categories as we did. That helped a lot. Also the way of explaining the different kinds of “meaning” was very easy to follow. I would have liked to talk a little bit more in detail about the semantic sign types, probably with some examples.
We kept on talking about the two different kinds of meaning: sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung). The sense can be explained as something we have in our head and understand in terms of our language, while the reference really exists in the world. There are a number of parts in the language that have sense but no reference, for example grammatical words, fictional people like Harry Potter, or depending on the individual believing the devil and God.
The last topic we covered today was the review of semantic sign types. First of all, there are index signs with a relationship to physical proximity in connection with place (e.g. pointing at something in the real world; “index finger”) or cause (smoke is usually a sign for fire). Icons belong to the second category. They are a sign with a relationship of similarity. An example for acoustic similarity would be the animal sounds people of different languages produce and associate with the animal (“wuff wuff”, “miau”). Symbols are signs with an arbitrary relationship. Most of the words in a language belong to this category because there is no acoustic resemble to the object. Exceptions are some pronouns and adverbs which are index signs (e.g. this and that, here and there, I and you).
Evaluation:
It was helpful to discuss the concept of signs in more detail and with some examples. I hope that it is clearer to me now and that I may solve the homework task easier.
2008-01-16
Summary 12
Porfolios
There were some problems with the university web server today, therefore we used the lecture to talk about our portfolios. We did not do anything new today.
2007-10-23
Great Vowel Shift
What are the corresponding German forms?
Make – machen
Beak, break – brechen
Feet – Füße
Mice – Mäuse
Mouse – Maus
Boat – Boot
Basically the long vowels shifted upwards, meaning that a vowel used to be pronounced in a higher place in the mouth. That all happened in different steps we did not discuss any further.
Task 3 b)
- Who or what is “Beowulf”
“Beowulf” is an Old English heroic epic poem. Neither the author nor the genesis is known. Scholars guess that it must be written about 700 – 750 AD. The manuscript itself has no title, but is known as “Beowulf” since the early 19th century. It is the single major Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry that has been found. It has risen to so much prominence that it is also described as “England’s national epos”.
- Find an example of the text and a translation
Text passage:
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga,
þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Translation:
Quit! Our story speaks
of the Spear-Danes
their greates kings’
accomplisments
How in former times
lived fearless men.
(http://alliteration.net/beoIndex.htm)
Actually, looking at the text and the translation I can just agree with our findings during the lecture: Old English is from our present point of view neither totally readable nor understandable. It sees, that “Hwaet” means “Quit”; “We” could stand for “Our”, so that they may had a different use of pronouns during that time; “hu” could mean “how” and “ellen fremedon” probably “fearless men”. But all together it is very hard to find similarities.
Since the schedule for today’s lecture changed a bit, we also changed the homework tasks:
Task 3 c)
Find some Arabic, Chinese or Hindu influence on the English language.
Chinese
- Feng Shui
- ginkgo
- ketchup
- kung fu
- silk
- tofu
- tea
- Ying Yang
Arabic
- alcohol
- amber
- apricot
- coffee
- crimson
- giraffe
- hashish
- mascara
- massage
- monsoon
- sugar
- zero
Hindi
- jungle
- bungalow
- punch
- shampoo
- bangle
In some urban and semi-urban areas of India “Hinglish” is spoken; a mixture between English and Hindi. That is partly because of the popularity of English. Also the Bollywood films contribute to the distribution of Hinglish. An example would be:
- "Dad, time kyā huā hai?" (Dad, what is the time right now?).
- "I have hazār things on my mind right now." (I have thousands of things on my mind right now.)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi)
Most of the words with this Asian origin are to be seen in connection with coming in contact with a new culture: Adapting habits (massage, Feng Shui), food (apricot), customs, so far unknown animals (giraffe), plants (hashish, coffee, Gingko) or phenomenon (monsoon).
Task 3 d)
How is the consonant “c” differently realized?
- pronounced as a “k”: car, cat, crazy (at the beginning of a word)
- pronounced as “k”: logical, scholar (within a word)
- pronounced as “k”: atmospheric (at the end of a word)
- pronounced as a “sch”: chef, chair, chain, chic (in combination with “h”)
- pronounced as a “tsch”: chestnut (at the beginning of a word)
- pronounced as a “ch”: Chinese (at the beginning of a word)
- pronounced as a “s”: reticence (within a word)
2007-11-07
Task 4 a)
Define:
- syllable
A syllable consists of phonemes and organizes as a unit speech sounds. The general structure consists of onset, a rhyme, a nucleus (mostly a vowel) and a coda (typically a consonant).
- phoneme
A phoneme can be described as the smallest word-distinguishing unit of speech. It consists of different phones. A group of phones that belong to the same phoneme are called allophones. They vary in pronunciation according to their environment. A phoneme can be determined by forming minimal-pairs.
- find examples of 5 not-too-short words and divide them into syllables
- haircut: \ˈher-ˌkət\ ; hair -cut
- playground: \ˈplāˌgrau̇nd\; play-ground
- sunglasses: \ˈsən-ˌglas\ ; sun-glasses
- raincoat: \ˈrān-ˌkōt\ ; rain-coat
- accident: \ˈak-sə-dənt\; ac-ci-dent
Task 4 b)
(Since we did focus on pronunciation (and skipped the spelling), I regard those tasks as more important)
List:
- the consonants in German which do not occur in English
In English you do not find the voiced velar fricative and the unvoiced uvular fricative.
- the consonants of English which do not occur in German
In German you do not find both realisations of the “th”: the voiced and unvoiced dental fricative; as well as the alveolar approximant.
- the vowels of German which do not occur in English
I think in English you can’t find the following vowels:
- front, close, unrounded
- close-mid, back, unrounded
- front, open-mid, rounded
- front, open, rounded
- the vowels of English which do not occur in German
I think in German you can’t find the following vowels:
- back, open-mid, rounded
- back, open, unrounded
Task 4 c)
Take a look at models of the ear: summarise the functions of the outer ear, the middle ear, the inner ear.
The sound waves reach the outer ear: The pinna protects the ear and helps to collect the sound waves. Then it passes the outer ear canal and deflects the eardrum. While it is transmitted via the auditory ossicles, the sound gets transformed into mechanical movement. The tension between the anvil and the stirrup has also a protection function because it reduces the frequency. The stirrup touches the oval window, the entrance to the inner ear: The cochlea. The Cochlea is filled with liquid and divided by two membranes. The basilar membrane is very important. On its stiffer end it is sensible to higher frequencies, compared to the more flexible end (lower frequencies). Along the membrane you can find the organ of corti. Tinny little hair cells transmit neural signal through the auditory nerve to the brain, where the sound gets interpreted.
2007-11-14
Task 5 a)
See last week’s task.
2007-11-21
Task 6 a)
Find at least 20 simple words
Simple words consist just of one morpheme: tea, water, light, green, nice, pen, mouse, heart, card, bird, map, go, hide, like, fear, paper, rose, puddle, heat
Find at least 20 complex words
Complex words consist of more than one morpheme: cups, believed, goes, married, quickly, driver, car-driver, dogs, photos, arguing, hastily, cupboard, hiding, loves, horses, nearly, heard, hurts, slowly, playing
Task 6 b)
Make a list of 20 free morphemes
Free morphemes may stand alone and therefore are simple words (see above). Other examples may be: Bus, walk, black, cat, kitchen, house, slow, bike, eat, sofa, need, shirt…
Find bound morphemes
Bound morphemes can only occur in connection with other morphemes: -ly, -ed, -ing, -s, -ion, -ize, -un
Task 6 c)
List inflectional suffixes of English and Germen
English:
- regular plural: -s (cat – cats)
- irregular plural often by umlaut: (foot – feet)
- regular past tense: -ed (love – loved)
- irregular past often by ablaut: (ride – rode – ridden)
- third person singular: -s (walk – he/she/it walks)
- present participle:- ing (walk – is / are walking)
- comparative (regular, short adjective): -er (fast – faster)
- superlative (regular, short adjectives): -est (fast – the fastest)
….
German
You can find umlaut and ablaut more often in German than in English
- the German plural form may be indicated in various ways: -e (Hund – Hunde), -er (Haus – Häuser), -en (Frau – Frauen) …
- past tense: often by ablaut (schwimmen – schwamm), -te (lieben – liebte)
- third person singular: no difference in German
- present participle: not existing in German
- comparative: -er (schnell – schneller)
- superlative: -sten (schnell – am schnelsten)
2007-11-28
Task 7
Find the allomorphs for
- 3rd person present singular
/z/: after voiced consonants
/s/ : after voiceless consonants
/lz/: after sibilants
- simple past
/d/: after voiced consonants
/t/: after voiceless consonants
/ld/: after sibilants
- What are the similarities and differences to the plural allomorphs?
All variations have in common that the choice of the allophone depends on the surrounding sounds. There is not much of a difference between the regular plural and 3rd person present singular s because it depends on the pronunciation and not on the meaning. The principle which is applied to the simple past forms is also much alike: Voiced follows voiced and unvoiced follows unvoiced. In case of a sibilant we integrate an additional phoneme.
2007-12-05
Task 8 a)
Identify the syntagmatic relations in the following constructions:
- “department store detective”
It is a compound, which consist of three nouns:
Department store detective (compound noun) → department (noun) + store (noun) + detective (noun)
- “three people saw a woman and her dog in the shop"
→ Three people (noun) – saw a woman and her dog in the shop (predicate)
→ Three people (noun) – saw (verbal) a woman and her dog (object) in the shop (determination of place)
(sorry, no tree-structures possible)
Task 8 b)
Identify the paradicmatic relations in the following sets (similarities and differences)
- {/p/, /t/, /k/}
→ they are all plosives
→ they are all voicless
→ p: bilabial, t: alveolar, k: velar
- {object, furniture, chair, table}
→ they are all things
→ “table” and “chair” are hyponyms; “furniture” is their hypernym and “object” is even above in a hierarchical taxonomy structure (chair + table → furniture → objects)
- {walk, drive, run, ride}
→ they are all ways of moving
→ “run” and “walk” can be done by our own without any other objects
→ we need an additional object (car, horse, bike) for “drive” and “ride”
→ “run” is a faster movement than “walk”
→ “drive” (car, truck) and “ride” (horse, bike) belong to certain fitting activities
Task 8 c)
- Identify the part of speech of each word in the text.
Prostitutes’ deaths inquests open
Inquests (noun) into (preposition) the (determiner) deaths (noun) of (preposition) four (numeral) women (noun) who (determiner) were (verb) killed (main verb) in (preposition) Suffolk (noun) have (verb) been (verb) opened (main verb) and (conjunction) adjourned (main verb). The (determiner) hearing (noun) at (preposition) Ipswich (noun) Coroner’s (noun) Court (noun) found (main verb) no (quantifier) clear (adjective) cause (noun) of (preposition) death (noun) for (prepositioin) Tania Nicol (noun) and (conjunction) Annette Nicholls (noun). Anneli Alderton (noun) was (verb) asphyxiated (main verb) and (conjunction) Paula Clennell (noun) died (main verb) from (preposition) compression (noun) of (preposition) the (determiner) neck (neck), coroner (noun) Dr Peter Dean (noun) said (main verb). The (determiner) inquest (noun) into (preposition) the (determiner) death (noun) of (preposition) another (quantifier) victim (noun), Gemma Adams (noun), was (verb) opened (verb) last (adverb – time) week (noun).
Police (noun) are (verb) continuing (main verb) to question (verb - infinitive) two (quantifier) men (noun) about (preposition) the (determiner) murders (noun). The (determiner) first (quantifier) suspect (noun), Tom Stephens (noun), 37 (quantifier), was (verb) arrested (main verb) on (preposition) Monday (noun). A (determiner) second (quantifier) man (noun) being (verb) held (main verb) has (verb) been (verb) named (main verb) locally (adverb) as 48-years-old (adjective/quantifier?) Stephen Wright (noun). Both (quantifier) are (verb) suspected (main verb) of (preposition) killing (noun) all (quantifier) five (quantifier) women (noun).
- Group the words of one sentence into larger units.
Sentence: Both are subjected of killing all five women.
Both (subject) - are subjected of killing all five women (predicate).
Both (subject) – are subjected (verbal) of killing all five women (object)
(sorry, no tree-structure possible)
Task 8 d)
What happens when you count uncountable nouns?
You can’t just add a number (three milks*), but you have to use an appropriate word to make it countable (e.g. two bottles of milk, three kilos of flour, a cup of tea). You also have to use much instead of many and less instead of few.
2007-12-12
Task 9 a)
What is the meaning of “of”?
“Of” is called the “all purpose preposition” because you may use it in many contexts:
- genitive
- place
- distance
- to divide something
- Reason
- Topic
- Time
- …..
Construct prepositional phrases corresponding to the types of adverbs.
I am not sure what is meant with this task.
Task 9 b)
Find examples of conjunctions of each type and put them into sentences.
a) Coordinate conjunction:
- Tina goes to school and Tim goes to work.
- Tina goes to school, but she does not like it.
b) Subordinating conjunctions
- Tina, who is Tim’s sister, is good in math.
- Tina goes to school because she has to.
Task 9 c)
Find examples of different interjections.
- “uh”
- “mhm”
- “ah”
- “mm”
- “um”
- “so”
Task 9 d)
Select a newspaper text (2, 3 sentences)
Jones had already handed back the three gold medals and two bronze she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Last month, the International Association of Athletics Federations erased all of Jones’ results dating to September 2000, but it was up to the IOC to formally disqualify her and erase her Olympic medals.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/athletics/article3040787.ece
- make a list of the parts of speech
Jones (proper noun) had (auxiliary verb – aspectual) already (adverb: time) handed (verb: non-finite form, past participle) back (preposition) the (definite article) three (cardinal number) gold (adjective) medals ( common countable noun – compound noun) and (co-ordinating conjunction) two (cardinal number) bronze (adjective) she (personal pronoun) won (verb: finite-form) at (preposition) the (definite article) 2000 (cardinal number) Sydney (proper noun) Olympics (compound noun). Last (adverb: time) month (common countable noun), the (definite article) International (adjective) Association (commom countable noun – proper compound noun) of (preposition) Athletics (common uncountable noun) Federations (common countable noun – compound noun) erased (verb: finite-form) all (adjective) of (preposition) Jones’ (proper noun) results (common countable noun) dating (verb) to (preposition) September (common countable noun) 2000 (cardinal number), but (co-ordinating conjunciton) it (pronoun) was (verb: finite-form) up to (preposition) the (definite article) IOC (abrivation) to (prepositon) formally (adverb) disqualify (verb: finite form) her (personal pronoun/ possessive?) and (co-ordinating conjuction) erase (verb: finite-form) her (personal pronoun/ possessive?) Olympic medals (common countable compound noun).
- make a tree drawing of the sentences
Sorry, it is not possible to put such a tree drawing on my blog.
Find examples of sentences with subordinate clauses
- I like to go for a walk because the weather is nice.
- My car, which I bought two weeks ago, is very fast.
Formulate recursive rules for coordinated sentences
- with and
- base case: “and” links two main clauses
Tim goes to school and I go to work.
- complex case: “and” links at least two main clauses
Tim goes to school and I go to work and (but) my friend stays at home.
I like blue and red and
- exclusion condition: Nothing else is a coordinated sentence with and.
- for lists with comma and then with “and” at the end
- base case: “and” links words of the same category
I like blue and green balloons.
- complex case: “and” links the two last words when we have a list of words of the same category
I like blue, green, yellow and red balloons.
- exclusion condition: Nothing else is linked with “and” in a list with commas.
Task 9 f)
Give examples of non-verbal signs.
- beet gestures
- structuring gestures
- pointing
- shaking the head
- ….
Task 9 g)
Analyse these signs:
Please refer to (slight 10):
http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/gibbon/Classes/Classes2007WS/ITL/07-IntroSemantics.pdf
From left to right, beginning at the top:
1.
- arrow: index (physical proximity)
- writing: symbol (arbitrary relationship)
2.
- picture: icon (similarity with its meaning)
3.
- picture: icon (similarity with its meaning)
4.
- P: symbol (arbitrary relationship) / icon: (similarity: parking begins with p)
- red circle: symbol (arbitrary relationship, denotes part of speech act: forbidden)
5.
- writing: symbol (arbitrary relationship)
6.
- arrow: index (physical proximity)
7.
- red circle with white crossbar: symbol (arbitrary relationship, denotes part of speech act: forbidden)
8.
- deer: icon (similarity with meaning)
9.
- arrow : index (physical proximity); icon (similarity in meaning → shape)
- red circle: symbol (arbitrary relationship, denotes part of speech act: forbidden)
Strong paradigmatic relationship of similarity and a few differences to 4.
10.
- writing: symbol (arbitrary relationship)
11.
- arrow: index (physical proximity)
12.
- writing in combination with shape: symbol (arbitrary relationship)
13.
- writing: symbol (arbitrary relationship)
- arrow: index (physical proximity)
- picture: icon (similarity with meaning)
2007-12-19
No new tasks today (see last week).
2008-01-09
No new tasks today .
2008-01-16
No new tasks today.
