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PROFESSOR IAN ROBERTS
IGR20@CAM.AC.UK
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Linguistics Tripos Paper 2: Structures and
Meanings
Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
STRUCTURES
COURSE OUTLINE
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Lecture 1, October 13th:
Introduction to formal
approaches to language
Lecture 2, October 20th:
Categories and
constituents
Lecture 3, October 27th:
PS-rules
Lecture 4, November 3rd: X'-theory
Lecture 5, November 10th: Wh-Movement
Lecture 6, November 17th: Pronouns
Lecture 7, November 24th: Syntax beyond English: a
first look*
Lecture 8, December 1st: The architecture of the
grammar*
*Lectures to be given by T Biberauer.
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Lecture One
Introduction to Formal Approaches to
Language
SUPERVISIONS
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You have all been assigned to a supervision
group. Your supervisor for these lectures is one of
A Appleton, T Biberauer and D Michelioudakis.
Supervisions take place every week, attendance
is obligatory, and an assignment (exercises or
essay) must be completed for every supervision.
Contact your supervisor for the date and time of
your first supervision and details regarding your
first assignment.
 If you do not yet know who your supervisor
is, please see me immediately after this
lecture.

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READING LIST
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
Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
see
http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/ling/courses/reading/S
tructures%20and%20meanings.pdf
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HANDOUTS AND POWER POINTS
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from these lectures will be available at:
 http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/ling/courses/ugrad/s&
m.html
 I will also email you a handout in advance of the
lecture each week.
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SUPPLEMENTARY GENERAL
LINGUISTICS LECTURES
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October 25th Where do languages come from? (Lecture
Room One, Sidgwick Site).
November 1st Historical Linguistics: Questions of
reconstruction and relatedness (Music Room, Downing
College)
November 8th The Evolution of Language (West Lodge,
Downing College)
Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
These lectures are intended to provide you with additional
extra background in linguistic theory, and on issues of
general concern and (in some cases) controversy. They will
be held on Mondays at 5pm (unfortunately, in differing
venues). The topics will be:
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WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
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Linguistics is the scientific study of language. This
means
 we do not pay attention to how things ought to be
(prescriptivism – see below) but how they are;
 we do not evaluate language aesthetically (as you
may do in literary studies, for example),
 we attempt to construct systematic theories
about language (what this means will emerge
over the coming lectures), and
 We begin by defining our terms, so ....
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WHAT IS (A) LANGUAGE?

What is language? vs What is a language?
language = the capacity that (as far as we know)
most clearly distinguishes man from other animals
(cf. homo loquens)
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1.
a language = a specific instantiation of this uniquely
human capacity against the background of a given
culture, e.g. English, Navajo, Warlpiri, Basque, etc.
[NB various European languages distinguish
‘language’ from ‘a language’ – cf. French: langue
vs langage; Italian: lingua vs linguaggio; Spanish
lengua vs lenguaje].
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NATURAL LANGUAGE VS ARTIFICIAL
LANGUAGE:
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artificial languages are languages designed for
some specific purpose and restricted in terms of their
functions, which we can usually say when and by
whom they were invented:
e.g. the language of logic (invented by Aristotle ca
400BC), computer languages (all invented since ca
1950), etc.
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natural languages are languages spoken as native
languages (mother-tongues) and capable of fulfilling
the full range of communicative functions, and whose
origins are obscure in that we can’t fix a (nonarbitrary) time or place for where they began;
e.g. English, French, ...
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OTHER CASES
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Semaphore/morse code, etc:
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Invented languages Esperanto, Interlingua, Quenya,
Sindarin, Newspeak, etc.
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‘body language’: frowning, shaking your head/nodding,
crossing your arms in various ways, etc.
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Music (?)
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Sign Language (actually not a single linguistic entity –
there are various different Sign Languages, e.g. British
Sign Language (BSL), American Sign Language (NSL),
Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), South African Sign
Language (SASL), etc.)
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LINGUISTICS IS REALLY ABOUT
NATURAL LANGUAGE
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Thus: a major focus of linguistic research
(particularly since the 20th century, but also before –
cf. Robins 1997 for discussion; also Law 2003) has
been the following question:
Do all natural languages have something in
common not shared by other systems of
communication?
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the implication is that linguists believe that it makes
sense to study language in general and not just
individual languages, and this presupposes that all
the specific instantiations of language have
something in common.
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2. BRIEFLY CONSIDERING ‘A
LANGUAGE’
teleological perspective – cf. “I am learning Xhosa this
year”
“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy” [Max
Weinreich, 1945]

a socio-political perspective: takes account of a
distinction that’s often politically important, namely
dialect vs standard language
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normative/prescriptive perspectives (“Don’t end a
sentence with a preposition”, “Don’t split infinitives”,
etc).; cf. also institutions such as the Académie
Française, the Queen’s English Society, etc.
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“A LANGUAGE” II
• linguists primarily concerned with “core” linguistic theory abstract
away from the socio-political considerations involved in
dialect/standard debates (but cf. Language Planning, etc.). This is a
form of idealisation.
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• the dialect vs. standard language distinction artificially “selects” a
given linguistic variety as socially privileged (cf. the different
varieties of English that formed the basis for British, American and
Australian English; Tuscan vs. Veneto vs. Neapolitan as the basis for
Standard Italian; “Chinese dialects”; Hochdeutsch vs Schriftdeutsch
etc.);
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• linguistically speaking, all fully fledged natural language-systems (i.e.
those with native-speakers) are equal: they all have systematic
phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic
characteristics, and they all appear to be of roughly the same level of
complexity;
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“A LANGUAGE” III

recognition of the fact that no 2 speakers of a given
language actually know precisely the same things about
that language or use it in precisely the same way.
• idiolect = the variety (lect) employed by a particular person
(cf. also sociolect, chronolect, ethnolect, etc.)
• for linguists: how much individual variation can one ignore
in order to have anything coherent to study? [the
Idealisation Problem]
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“We must in reality distinguish as many languages as there
are individuals. [Hermann Paul, 1880]
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• the notion of a standard language is another type of
idealisation, one specially constructed by language
planners. In reality, no given language is homogenous:
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ATKINSON’S (1992:23) DEFINITION OF
AN ENGLISH SPEAKER:
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The person in question has an internal system of
representation .. the overt products of which
(utterance production and comprehension,
grammaticality judgements), in conjunction with
other mental capacities, are such that that
person is judged (by those deemed capable of
judging) to be a speaker of English.
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Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
. defining ‘a language’ isn’t as simple as it might
initially seem to be … Maybe it would be more
productive to try to understand what ‘language’
is so that we can then define ‘a language’ as a
specific instantiation (token) of this more general
entity (type). Mostly, terms like “English,”
“French,” etc. have a primarily sociocultural
sense.
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3. NATURAL LANGUAGE
o it is a system that can be learned by imitation, conditioning,
etc. (stimulus-response)
o BUT:
(i) the process of language acquisition doesn’t support this view
[on this there is no better source than Chomsky, N. (1959). A
review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language 35(1): 26 –
58, available on-line at:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm]
(ii) it is clear that humans use language creatively, not just as
responses to stimuli (see our fishy sentences below).
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(1)
language is a particular form of behaviour (cf.
Behaviourist psychology of the mid-20th century), that is:
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Three main ways of looking at language:
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(2) THE FUNCTIONALIST VIEW
(a) the informative use of language which involves an effort to
communicate some content.
(b) the expressive/affective use of language which intends only to
vent some feeling, or perhaps to evoke some feeling from other
people.
(c) the directive use of language which aims to cause or prevent
some overt action by a human agent.
o functionalists study language structure on the basis of the
idea that it is the way it is by virtue of the functions it fulfil
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nature of language derives from
how it is used, primarily in
communication:
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 The
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(3) THE FORMAL, COGNITIVE VIEW
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This is the view favoured in these lectures
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language is a form of knowledge
 our uniquely human language capacity is
part of our cognitive make-up (cf. S. Pinker
(1994) The Language Instinct, London: Penguin).
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THREE FACTORS BEHIND
LANGUAGE
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o Universal Grammar (UG) is the theory of (b): our innate
genetic endowment for language
o UG is assumed to play a role in language acquisition and
also in helping us to understand how we can make sense of
the idea that specific languages are actually instantiations
of a single type of entity, language
o Here we’ll mainly be looking at a part of UG: the theory of
syntax (how words combine to form sentences)
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(a) experience (what we learned as children)
(b) perhaps an innate set of linguistic abilities
(c) our general cognitive capacities
– it is very difficult to tease out (b) vs. (c), and this question
will come up repeatedly.
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TWO IMPORTANT AND RELATED
DISTINCTIONS I
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I-language (internal, individual) vs E-language
(external)
 Here we focus on I-language, which originates
from the three sources above
 E-language is more complicated, involving
society, culture, history, etc.
 Concepts like “English”, “French” in their
everyday senses are E-language concepts
 (now look again at Section 2 in the light of the Evs I-language distinction)
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TWO IMPORTANT AND RELATED
DISTINCTIONS II
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competence (knowledge of how to do something)
vs performance (doing it)
 doesn’t only apply to language
 I-language and adult competence in the native
language are the same thing
 E-language and performance are very different
(the former largely socio-cultural, the latter
psychological)
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WHAT IS “COGNITIVE” ABOUT THIS
THEORY?
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o this is a cognitive theory of language, because it
intrinsically involves the human mind. In fact,
it’s a theory of language which could be part of an
overall theory of the mind
 (or brain?).
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WHAT MAKES A FORMAL
THEORY?
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Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
A formal approach assumes discrete, systematic
ways of forming complex things out of simple
things.
 The alphabet is formal as you can combine 26
symbols in various different, but more or less
systematic, ways to form a very large number of
words.
 In formal syntax and formal semantics we
combine simple elements (roughly words and
their meanings) to form more complex elements
(sentences and their meanings).
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WHY DO WE WANT A FORMAL AND
COGNITIVE THEORY?
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Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
It is widely believed that the best way to
understand the mind is as a kind of computer.
Computers manipulate symbols according to
formal instructions (algorithms/programs).
Language could be a program run on the
hardware of the brain.
 (Who or what wrote the program?)
 So a cognitive theory is naturally formal, if we
are trying to understand the mind in
computational terms.
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4.
TIME FOR A REAL (IF SLIGHTLY
FISHY) EXAMPLE
(1)
Fish!
[Noun/Verb Fish ]

The brackets are a way of saying “what is inside
here is a Noun/Verb”.
Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
The word is fish:
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Let’s start with a really banal (but ambiguous)
English word, and build sentences from it.
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TWO FISH
[N fish ] [V fish ]
(2)
Fish fish!
[V fish ] [N fish ]
[S [N fish ] [V fish ] ]
[S [V fish ] [N fish ] ]
“Fish fish stuff”
[S YouN [V fish ] [N fish ]]
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fish.
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(2) Fish
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TRY THREE FISH ...
Fish fish fish.
[S [N Fish ] [V fish ] [N fish ]]
[S [N Fish ] [Predicate [V fish ] [N fish ]] ]
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[N Fish ] [V fish ] [N fish ]
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(3)
[S [N Fish ] [VP [V fish ] [N fish ]] ]
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THEN THERE WERE FOUR ..
[Relative clause fish fish fish ] [VP [V fish ]]
[NP [N fish ] [N fish ] [V fish ] ] [VP [V fish ]]
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Fish fish fish fish.
?!??
Fish which fish fish .. fish.
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(4)
[S [NP [N fish ] [N fish ] [V fish ] ] [VP [V fish ]]]
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COULD THERE BE FIVE??
Fish fish fish fish fish.
[S [NP [N fish ] [Nfish] [V fish]] [VP [V fish ] [N fish ]]
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(4) was really “Fish fish fish fish stuff”. So:
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(5)
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LET’S JUMP TO SEVEN
Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish.
[ [ Fish fish fish ] [ fish [ fish fish fish ]] ].
[S [NP [N fish ] [Nfish] [V fish]] [VP [V fish ] [NP [N fish ]
[Nfish] [V fish]]
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If a subject can be a relative clause, so can
an object:
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(7)
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BUT THE HARDEST AND MOST
IMPORTANT ONE IS SIX
Fish fish fish fish fish fish.
We get to four by putting this inside a relative:
(4) [S [NP [N fish ] [S [N fish ] [V fish ]] ] [VP [V fish ]]]
Now do it again:
(6) [S [NP [N fish [S [NP [N fish ] [S [N fish ] [V fish ]] ]
[VP [V fish ]] [VP [V fish ]]
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Go back to two:
(2) [S [N fish ] [V fish ] ]
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(6)
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BACK TO TERRA FIRMA (AWAY
FROM THE FISH)
The girl the dog bit cursed the boy.
(8’) [ the girl [ the dog bit ]] [ cursed the boy ] ]
And here’s another hard one:
(9)
[S [NP The boy [NP the girl [NP the dog [VP bit ] ] ]
[VP cursed ] ] [VP fled ] ]
(9’)The boy who the girl who the dog bit cursed fled.
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Now we know a relative clause when we see one:
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(8)
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CENTRE-EMBEDDED FISH
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So:
[S [NP fish [NP fish [NP fish [VP fish ] ] ]
[VP fish ] ] [VP fish] ]
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The boy the girl the dog bit cursed fled.

Fish fish
fish fish fish fish.
Fish which fish which fish fish fish fish.
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RELATIVE CLAUSES JUST GO ON
AND ON
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the boy who lived (Ron Weasley)
the rat who lived in the house that Jack built.
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This is the guy who loved the girl who befriended
This is the dog who bit
the cat who ate
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SO DO CENTRE-EMBEDDED ONES
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[ The rat [ the cat [ the dog [ bit ]] [ ate ]] [ lived in
the house that Jack built ].
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(except they’re really hard to understand):
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THREE QUESTIONS
Infinity. The “house that Jack built” sentences
show us that we can just keep on making more
and more complex relative clauses with no upper
limit (to competence, your performance will stop
sometime in the next 50 years or so).
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what is the highest number of repetitions of the
word fish alone that constitutes a grammatical
English sentence?
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1.
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3. where did you learn these facts about English?
That’s the question!! We have very rich tacit
knowledge, of even the silliest and most
awkward sentences, which we were almost
certainly never “taught”.
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Probably not (except maybe the “house that
Jack built” ones). But you can, sometimes with a
bit of thought, understand them. This is your Ilanguage/competence in action.
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2. have you seen these sentences before?
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A GENERAL VIEW
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Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
Our formal cognitive theory of what it is to be a
competent English speaker involves:
 Having a specific I-language that corresponds
more or less to the socio-cultural E-language
construct “English” (see again the Atkinson
quote)
 That I-language comes from the 3 factors:
 (i) exposure to English when small
 (ii) some language-specific innate “knowledge”
 (iii) general cognitive abilities
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MORE SPECIFICALLY, THE THEORY
OF SYNTAX
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Specifies the possible structures of English
sentences (and for other languages), i.e. tries to
characterise the native-speaker’s tacit knowledge
of their I-language
 Relates those structures to the three factors by:
 (i) showing how adult competence arises from
first-language acquisition
 (ii) showing how English (etc) are related to the
universal innate knowledge, i.e. constructing the
theory UG
 (iii) relating (i) and (ii) to general cognition
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Roberts, Structures, Michaelmas 2010
Now we’ll see how all this really works….
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We’ve seen with the help of the fish that the
structures are:
 (i) potentially infinite
 (ii) built out of very simple elements
 (iii) built by repeating the same operations on
structure again and again
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