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CLASS 22, March 27, 2007
LIN 1310B
Introduction to Linguistics
Prof: Nikolay Slavkov
TA: Qinghua Tang
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Course Evaluation
• Course code 1310B, prof: Nikolay Slavkov
• Evaluation should take about 20 minutes.
• It is very important that you give me and
the Faculty of Arts feedback.
• Specific comments will be highly
appreciated!!!
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FINAL Exam Schedule
INTRO LING I: WORDS
UTTERANCES
LIN1310 B
Prof: Slavkov, Nikolay
2007-04-26
Thursday
14:00 17:00
Technology &
Room:
Engineering
H0104
SITE
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Today
• Announcements and Reminders:
-Great job, everyone! Test 2 average: 85.27 (A).
-Test 2 results are posted on the website by last four
digits of your ID number.
-If you have questions about test 2, come see me in
office hours. (You’re welcome to review your
answer sheet, etc.)
-Office hours this week are moved to Friday after
class (no office hours today, Tuesday, March 27).
• Today’s Lecture:
-Continue Semantics
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Review from last time
• synonyms, antonyms, homophony,
polysemy, lexical ambiguity
• paraphrase, entailment, contradiction
• connotation, denotation, extension and
intension
• componential analysis
• verb meaning and subcategorization
• conjunction, disjunction and negation
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The conceptual system
• The conceptual system organizes and
classifies our inner feelings, perceptions,
cultural and social phenomena, the physical
world that surrounds us. All of these can be
expressed with the use of words and
sentences.
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Fuzzy concepts
• consider the following:
Member of Parliament
vs.
A rich person
=> Notions with unclear boundaries are called
fuzzy concepts
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Graded membership
• consider the following:
hockey start:
Wayne Gretzky
Mark Messier
bird: ??? what are typical representatives of birds?
[robins, magpies], [pigeons, hawks,] [hummingbirds,
storks] [ostriches, penguins]
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Graded membership
• p. 183 figure 6.2
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Metaphor
• What is a metaphor, can you give me an
example?
-The vine became a snake and twisted around
her ankle.
=> the vine doesn’t really become a snake, but
we use this expression to make a point.
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Metaphor
metaphors are not just a literary device,
they are part of our everyday
communication
Metaphor of time as a commodity:
Time can be bought, wasted, saved, spent,
invested, budgeted, worth, borrowed, used
profitably, etc.
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A spatial metaphor
• use of words that are associated with spatial
orientation to describe physical or
psychological states.
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• p. 184, table 6.6
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Lexicalization of concepts
• Does our conceptual system influence the
way we speak?
• Does the way we speak influence our
conceptual system?
E.g. words for snow in Inuktitut,
words for colour
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Lexicalization
• lexicalization: the process of encoding
concepts in the words of a language
E.g. Inuktitut qana ‘falling snow’
what’s interesting this example?
=>two concepts ‘falling’ and ‘snow’ which in
English are expressed as separate words.
Motion verbs
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•
All languages express motion through space.
But there are differences in terms of how
languages express motion and the concepts
related to it. Consider the following verbs:
1. The rock rolled down the hill.
2. The puck slid across the ice.
3. She limped through the house.
4. The smoke swirled through the opening.
=>English encodes motion and manner
=>This is called a conflation pattern
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Motion verbs: Spanish vs. English
conflation patterns
1. *La botella rodó en la cueva
‘The bottle rolled into the cave.’
2. La botella entró en la cueva, rodando
‘The bottle entered the cave, rolling’
=>In contrast to English motion verbs which include
a conflation pattern combining manner and
motion into a single verb meaning, Romance
languages cannot express motion in this way.
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Motion verbs: Spanish vs. English
conflation patterns
p. 186 table 6.10
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Motion verbs: Spanish vs. English
conflation patterns
• How can we describe the conflation pattern of
Spanish?
motion + path
Does English also have the motion + path pattern?
Yes. with verbs like descend, ascend, return, etc.
But what is the origin of these words?
Romance
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Conflation patterns in
Atsugewi (Amerindian Language)
• p. 6.11
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Conflation pattern in Atsugewi
how can we describe the conflation pattern in
Atsugewi?
=> motion + moved thing
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Back to componential analysis…
• Do conflation patterns remind us of anything?
Componential analysis: it seems that there exists a
small set of universal concepts and a small set of
options for how they can be lexicalized.
The concept of motion is associated with a
number of other concepts. These are lexicalized
differently in the different languages.
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Which is the universal concept?
• p. 187, fig 6.3
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Grammaticization
When a affix or a non-lexical (functional)
category express some concept, we have
grammaticization:
E.g. affixes: –ed, pl. -s, re-, in-, unE.g. non-lexical categories: the, may, must,
will, etc.
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Hidatsa Evidentials
• p. 188, table 6.13