Outcomes of Jesse’s class

• Many communicative systems (CS) exist in the non human animal kingdom (bees, birdsongs, vervet monkeys)

• They are very un-language like

• JS’s hypothesis: Language evolved gradually, maybe over 2 m years

My task: How does the end result of language evolution look like?

Main thesis: Language as a computational facility.Units of computation

Word level: Morphemes

Sound level: Phonemes

Syntactic level: Phrases

Semantic level: Logical primitives

Combinatorial apparatus

Concatenate/merge

Concatenate/merge

Concatenate/merge

Apply/infer

For the future:The logical problem of language evolution

• If language evolved, there must have been intermediate links:

VMCS …IL…HSL

Where:

VMCS = Vervet monkeys communication system

HSL = The language of Homo Sapiens

IL = intermediate link

• IL should be substantially different from both VMCS and

HSL

• How could IL look like?

For the future:The logical problem of language evolution

• A very rough first guess on IL:

1. IL has fewer primitive units (e.g., fewer ‘words’)

2. IL has simpler modes of combination

(e.g. some limit on the size of the ‘chunks’)

me + hungry me hungry

me + love + you me love you

For the future:The logical problem of language evolution

1. With very few units (even just 2) and

2. At least one ‘iterable’ mode of combination,

You can express the whole of math and physics.

‘Iterable’ = if you can combine n units, you can also

combine n+1 units.

VMCS …IL…HSL

Chomsky’s guess:

If IL has (2), then it is like HSL; if not, it is like VMCS

What is a word?

swim swims swimmer swim coach

The paradox of compounding

black bird two meanings

black tiny bird one meaning

N NP

A N A N

black bird black bird

Compounding in Italian

Quella nave draga mine

That ship sweeps mines

Quelle navi sono draga mine

Those ships are mine sweepers

Quella nave, cosa draga __?

That ship, what sweeps__?

What does that ship sweep?

* Quelle navi, cosa sono draga __?

Words as atoms

Even though compounds are made up of more than one word their components are inaccessible to prototypical syntactic processes (like pronominalization, movement, etc.).

This is why compounds count as single words.

The inner structure of words

N N V N

N N N Af V Af V Af

pet fish swim s swim s swim er

inflectional derivational

these three may count as

one (content) word: one

arbitrary sound meaning

association [listemes]

How many words (/listemes) do we know?

A good size lexicon: 90.000 entries

Shakespeare: 15.000 words

You?:

Morphological variation: Analytic Languages

English: 4 Verb forms

Chinese: no bound morphemes

Wɔ men tan tçin lə

I plural play piano perfective

We played the piano

Synthetic Languages

• Italian: 50 V forms• Greek: 350 V forms• Turkish: 2000 V forms• Sora (Munda, Eastern India): ?

aninɲamjɔtenanin -ɲam -jɔ -te -nhe catch fish non past dohe is doing fish catchinghe is catching fish

Bound and free morphemes

V V Af

walk ed ‘walk did’V V Afcammin eró ‘cammin avró’(I) will walk (I) to walk have

Germanic: V roots are free morphemesRomance: V roots are bound morphemes

Some complex words

N

N Af

V Af

A Af

N Af

act ive ate ion s

Constraints on derivation

quicken *slowen

whiten *bluen

madden *angryen

Productivity of the lexicon

We do not want to make extensive use of

retroactivations

He totally outwimps me

He outchomskyed even Chomsky

Non concatenative morphology

kataba kutib aktub

wrote has been written am writing

a u i a u

CVCVCV CVCVC VCCVC

k t b k t b k t b

Summary

Morpheme: a minimal unit (sequence of sounds) associated with a meaning

table-s snore-s

Words are structures composed of morphemes (typically by concatenation)

humid-ify-er

Main morphological processes

• Derivationun happy ness

• Inflectionyou walk / he walks

• Compoundingpet fish mine sweeper

subject to parametric variation

Content morpheme vs. function morphemes

• Content morpheme can be (and are) constantly added to the lexicon

• humid-ify• wuggy= having a surface with little goose

bumps I want to dewuggify my skin

• Function morphemes are hard to add/deletewuggylok tables ???

The lexicon is based on a discrete combinatorial calculus

Words have a hidden structure

• bláck bird vs. black bírd

• Quella nave draga mine

That ship sweeps mines

• Quelle navi sono dragamine

Those ships are mine sweepers

Dual patterning: How are words coded?Phonemes and features

Phonetics

Writing: a human invention

• Logographic systems: Chinese, kanji

箱 xiāng ‘box’• Phonographic

- Syllabic: Cherokee, Devanāgāri

क ka ग ga

- Phonemic: Latin, Cyrillic

ж ʒ д d ы ɨ

History of writing systems• Mesopotamia (Sumer) 3200BC• Possible precursors

Ancient number writings (Iran, 4000 BC)

Pictograms• Egyptians hieroglyphs (3400 BC)

Pictograms that evolved into writing through contacts with the Sumerians

• Chinese logographs (1200bc)• Mesoamerica (Zapotec, Mexico 700 BC)

English: A very unfaithful phonemic system

ghoti

English: A very unfaithful phonemic system

Necessary unfaithfulness of writing systems

democrat æ

democracy ə

cats s sip

dogs z zip

conosco sk I know

conosci sh You know

The vocal tract

The English vowel system

How do English vowels sound

[i] beat, we [ɪ] bit, consist

[ɛ] bet, guest [æ] bat, anger

[u] boot, who [ʊ] put, foot

[ɔ] bought, wrong [ɑ] pot, father

[ʌ] but, oven [ə] among, sofa

http://www.ipachart.com/

Consonants

• Do the vocal cords vibrate?

Yes: z b ðNo: s, p, θ

• Place of articulation

Where is the airstream restricted?

• Manner of articulation

How is the airstream restricted?

Place of articulation

• Bilabial: [p], [b], [m], [w], [wa a]

• Labiodental: [f],[v]

• Dental: [θ], [ð]

• Alveolar: [t], [d], [s],[z], [n],[l],[ɹ]

• Palatal: [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ],[dʒ],[j]

• Velar: [k], [g], [ŋ]

• Glottal: [h], [ʔ]

Manner of articulation

• Stops: [p],[t],[k],[ʔ],[n]

• Fricatives: [f],[θ],[s],[ʃ]

• Affricates: [tʃ]

• Nasals: [n],[m], [ŋ]

• Liquids: [l], [ɹ]

• Glides: [j],[w]

Generating ‘exotic’ vowels

• Front rounded

y French: [ty] ‘you’ German: Grüss

ø French: [fø] ‘fire’ German: Schön

• Back unrounded

[ɯ] Min Nan: [tɯ] ‘pig’

• Mid unrounded

[ɨ] Russian: [bɨl] ‘(I) was’

Generating exotic consonants

• Bilabial fricative: [β]

Ewe (Niger-Congo, e.g. Ghana/Togo)

[ɛβɛ]

• Velar fricative: [x]

• German: [bax] ‘small river’

• Pharingeal fricative: [ʕ]

Hebrew: [ʕor] ‘skin’

Exotic consonants of Italian

Consonanl length:

[pane] [pan:e] [fato] [fat:o]

bread creams fate fact

Palatalized consonants

[baɲ:o] ‘bath’ [aʎ:o] ‘garlic’

Alveolar affricate:

[pit:sa] ‘pizza’

IPA chart non-pulmonic consonants

• Clicks: ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ

• Implosives: ɓ ɗ ʄ ᶑ

• Ejectives: pʼ tʼ kʼ

Double blockage:

lips / velum and glottis

In clicks and implosives air is sucked in

Suprasegmental phenomena

• Stress

récord recórd

áncora ‘anchor’ ancóra ‘again’

• Tone

[mā] ‘mother’ [may ] ‘hemp’

[mǎ] ‘horse’ [ma{ ] ‘scold’

How we use our articulators:Phonemes and allophones

• tuck

• stuck

• put

• kitten

• pitted

• truck

Phonemes and allophones

• tuck [tʰʌʔk] aspirated

• stuck [stʌʔk] released

• put [pʊʔt] unreleased

• kitten [kʰɪʔn~ ] glottal stop

• pitted [pʰɪɾed] flap

• truck[tjɹʌʔk] palatalized

Phoneme

• A class of sounds with a unique grammatical (typically, distinctive) function

• k/kh are allophones in English; they are different phonemes in Hindi

[ki:l] ‘parched grain’ [khi:l] ‘nail’• s/z are different phonemes in English,

they are allophones in Italian

Towards a grammar of the sounds of language

Sounds of the languages of the world are produced in a largely uniform way through a few choices in the phonatory apparatus (which, however, generate a large domain of possible units)

Towards a grammar of the sounds of language

• Different languages:

- select an inventory

- choose how to treat the sounds in their

inventory (e.g. as variants of the same unit

or as forming distinct units)• Grammar here means:

A calculus of how sounds patterns are created and decoded