DOCSLIB.ORG

Word Recognition Strategies Amongst Isixhosa/English Bilingual Learners: the Interaction of Orthography and Language of Learning and Teaching

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Word Recognition Strategies Amongst Isixhosa/English Bilingual Learners: the Interaction of Orthography and Language of Learning and Teaching Reading & Writing - Journal of the Reading Association of South Africa ISSN: (Online) 2308-1422, (Print) 2079-8245 Page 1 of 10 Original Research Word recognition strategies amongst isiXhosa/English bilingual learners: The interaction of orthography and language of learning and teaching Authors: Word recognition is a major component of fluent reading and involves an interaction of language 1 Tracy Probert structure, orthography, and metalinguistic skills. This study examined reading strategies in Mark de Vos1 isiXhosa and the transfer of these strategies to an additional language, English. IsiXhosa was Affiliations: chosen because of its agglutinative structure and conjunctive orthography. Data was collected at 1Department of English two schools which differed with regards to their language of learning and teaching (LoLT) in the Language and Linguistics, first three years of schooling: isiXhosa and English respectively. Participants completed a word- Rhodes University, South and pseudo-word reading aloud task in each of two languages which hypothetically impose Africa different cognitive demands. Skills transfer occurs to a limited extent when the language of first Corresponding author: literacy uses a transparent orthography, but is less predictable when the language of first literacy Mark de Vos, uses an opaque orthography. We show that although there is transfer of word recognition strategies [email protected] from transparent to deep orthographies, felicitous transfer is limited to sublexical strategies; Dates: infelicitous transfer also occurs when lexical strategies are transferred in problematic ways. The Received: 26 Apr. 2015 results support the contention that reading strategies and cognitive skills are fine tuned to particular Accepted: 02 Mar. 2016 languages. This study emphasises that literacies in different languages present readers with Published: 27 May 2016 different structural puzzles which require language-particular suites of cognitive reading skills. How to cite this article: Probert, T. & De Vos, M., 2016, ‘Word recognition Word recognition: A complex interplay of orthography, strategies amongst isiXhosa/ English bilingual learners: The language structure, and cognitive skills interaction of orthography Rapid and effortless word recognition is a major component of fluent reading (Aaronet al. 1999; and language of learning and Invernizzi & Hayes 2010:196). Although reading straddles ‘linguistic, neurolinguistic, cognitive, teaching’, Reading & Writing 7(1), a84. http://dx.doi. psychological, sociological, developmental and educational domains’ (Pretorius & Mokhwesana org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.84 2009:55), word recognition, has been studied as a set of related neurological processes. There are distinct neural pathways for recognition of gestalt-like whole words versus decomposing a complex Copyright: word into its component parts. However, there are at least three issues that impact on these neural © 2016. The Authors. processes. Firstly, at a psycholinguistic level, words are defined through the structures of a language; Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the different languages package different phonological and morphosyntactic features in different ways. Creative Commons Secondly, linguistic words are mediated in print through orthographies. Orthographies are, more Attribution License. often than not, a set of linguistic and sociocultural compromises developed in particular social contexts. For instance, although all South African Bantu languages are agglutinative in their linguistic structure, they may have either conjunctive or disjunctive orthographies, reflecting both the linguistic and social decisions that went into their transcription (Louwrens & Poulos 2006). Thirdly, learners have at their disposal a number of cognitive tools which they use to solve the reading puzzles presented to them. These skills are dynamically developed through exposure to print orthography and include phonological and morphological awareness. These three sets of interacting factors conspire to make word recognition different in different languages and for different orthographies. Word structure in Bantu languages IsiXhosa, like all Bantu languages, has a relatively simple syllable structure based around a (C)V(V) template (Hua 2002). In addition, there are constraints on complex syllable onsets. Although some words appear to have a complex onset orthographically, these are often single consonants corresponding to single phonemes and not a true phonological cluster (1ab). In contrast, English allows for more complex structures than CV, such as CCV and CCCV words (2ab): Read online: (1) a. CV: Dla.la [lʒala] Scan this QR ‘Play’ code with your smart phone or Note: We use the internationally accepted term, 'Bantu' to refer to the Bantu group within the Niger-Congo language family. We do not mobile device use the term to refer to people as occurred during the apartheid regime. We acknowledge that the use of the term Bantu has derogatory to read online. connotations in lay usage within the Republic of South Africa but use it in its technical sense in this article. The authors take full responsibility for this usage. http://www.rw.org.za Open Access Page 2 of 10 Original Research b. CV: Hla.ba [ɬaba] (4) a. Utata na umama → realised as: utata nomama ‘Stab’ father and mother (2) a. CCV: try [trai], glue [glu:] b. inciniba na inja → realised as: inciniba nenja ostrich and dog b. CCCV: straw [strɔ:], strew [stru:] The nature of words is language specific (Guthrie 1948; Louwrens and Poulos (2006) demonstrate convincingly that Louwrens & Poulos 2006; Prinsloo 2009). All Bantu Tswana is mostly written disjunctively except in contexts where phonological processes obscure the underlying forms; languages are agglutinating and consequently a Bantu in these contexts, Tswana is written conjunctively. Thus, word includes rich, overt morphology. For example, nouns orthographic choices mediate linguistic structural include noun class prefixes as well as stems whereas verbs considerations. There remain significant questions about include morphological reflexes of subject marking, object how orthographies and language structures conspire to make marking, tense, aspect, mood, causativity, and negation the reading experience different for different learners. among others. The result is that Bantu words (particularly Nevertheless, in South Africa, the relationship between nouns and verbs) tend to be much longer than their English language structure and orthography are not always reflected equivalents. in pedagogy: teacher training is oriented to English and Afrikaans; indigenous language curriculum documents are Linguistic structure is mediated through orthography. often translated directly from English and therefore reflect Because linguistic words may differ from orthographic English teaching concerns (Bikitsha & Katz 2013). words, learners are faced with language-specific processing challenges when attempting to recognise words in a particular There are limited studies on agglutinating languages which language. These challenges, in turn, presuppose language- could shed light on how reading occurs in isiXhosa. However, specific reading strategies. For example, Nguni languages some research on Turkish has been done. The structure of are written conjunctively and the Tswana and Sotho language Turkish, like that of isiXhosa is agglutinating and the groups tend to be written disjunctively. In (3a), a conjunctive orthography is conjunctive in character. Durgunoğlu and writing system yields only one orthographic word also Öney (1999) found that, in Turkish, a phonologically corresponding to one morphological word. The orthographic transparent orthography fosters early development of word word ngiyabathanda (3a) is therefore both a morphological recognition skills, and that phonological awareness word and an orthographic word. In contrast, in disjunctive contributes to word recognition in the early stages of reading orthographies, a linguistic word may correspond to a number acquisition. These results were attributed to the phonological of orthographic words (3b): and orthographic characteristics of the Turkish language and (3) a. Ngi-ya-ba-thand-a orthography. SM1.1SG-PRES-OM2-like-FV ‘I like them’ (isiZulu) b. ke a ba rat-a IsiXhosa and orthographic depth SM1.1sg pres OM2 like-fv Written languages may differ with respect to orthographic ‘I like them’ (Northern Sotho – Taljard & Bosch 2006:433). depth and consistency. Orthographic depth refers to the degree to which there are one-to-one correspondences This correspondence between orthographic and morphological between graphemes and linguistic categories (such as words is a characteristic feature of conjunctive orthographies phonemes or syllables) (Aro 2004). The source of opacity which distinguishes them from disjunctive scripts, such within the English orthography partly derives from historical as Northern Sotho (3b) and English (Taljard & Bosch 2006), spellings, dialectal speech differences, borrowing, and the although all South African Bantu languages have aspects fact that there are more phonemes in the spoken language of both conjunctive and disjunctive systems triggered by than there are graphemes to represent them (Frost 2005). linguistic context (Louwrens & Poulos 2006). Consequently, there is a relative lack of one-to-one correspondences between phonemes and graphemes. The The reason for the utilisation of different orthographies is second factor, consistency, involves the uniqueness
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Pronouns, Logical Variables, and Logophoricity in Abe Author(S): Hilda Koopman and Dominique Sportiche Source: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol
    MIT Press Pronouns, Logical Variables, and Logophoricity in Abe Author(s): Hilda Koopman and Dominique Sportiche Source: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 555-588 Published by: MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178645 Accessed: 22-10-2015 18:32 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Linguistic Inquiry. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.97.27.20 on Thu, 22 Oct 2015 18:32:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hilda Koopman Pronouns, Logical Variables, Dominique Sportiche and Logophoricity in Abe 1. Introduction 1.1. Preliminaries In this article we describe and analyze the propertiesof the pronominalsystem of Abe, a Kwa language spoken in the Ivory Coast, which we view as part of the study of pronominalentities (that is, of possible pronominaltypes) and of pronominalsystems (that is, of the cooccurrence restrictionson pronominaltypes in a particulargrammar). Abe has two series of thirdperson pronouns. One type of pronoun(0-pronoun) has basically the same propertiesas pronouns in languageslike English. The other type of pronoun(n-pronoun) very roughly corresponds to what has been called the referential use of pronounsin English(see Evans (1980)).It is also used as what is called a logophoric pronoun-that is, a particularpronoun that occurs in special embedded contexts (the logophoric contexts) to indicate reference to "the person whose speech, thought or perceptions are reported" (Clements (1975)).
    [Show full text]
  • Toward a Shared Syntax for Shifted Indexicals and Logophoric Pronouns
    Toward a Shared Syntax for Shifted Indexicals and Logophoric Pronouns Mark Baker Rutgers University April 2018 Abstract: I argue that indexical shift is more like logophoricity and complementizer agreement than most previous semantic accounts would have it. In particular, there is evidence of a syntactic requirement at work, such that the antecedent of a shifted “I” must be a superordinate subject, just as the antecedent of a logophoric pronoun or the goal of complementizer agreement must be. I take this to be evidence that the antecedent enters into a syntactic control relationship with a null operator in all three constructions. Comparative data comes from Magahi and Sakha (for indexical shift), Yoruba (for logophoric pronouns), and Lubukusu (for complementizer agreement). 1. Introduction Having had an office next to Lisa Travis’s for 12 formative years, I learned many things from her that still influence my thinking. One is her example of taking semantic notions, such as aspect and event roles, and finding ways to implement them in syntactic structure, so as to advance the study of less familiar languages and topics.1 In that spirit, I offer here some thoughts about how logophoricity and indexical shift, topics often discussed from a more or less semantic point of view, might have syntactic underpinnings—and indeed, the same syntactic underpinnings. On an impressionistic level, it would not seem too surprising for logophoricity and indexical shift to have a common syntactic infrastructure. Canonical logophoricity as it is found in various West African languages involves using a special pronoun inside the finite CP complement of a verb to refer to the subject of that verb.
    [Show full text]
  • Assibilation Or Analogy?: Reconsideration of Korean Noun Stem-Endings*
    Assibilation or analogy?: Reconsideration of Korean noun stem-endings* Ponghyung Lee (Daejeon University) This paper discusses two approaches to the nominal stem-endings in Korean inflection including loanwords: one is the assibilation approach, represented by H. Kim (2001) and the other is the analogy approach, represented by Albright (2002 et sequel) and Y. Kang (2003b). I contend that the assibilation approach is deficient in handling its underapplication to the non-nominal categories such as verb. More specifically, the assibilation approach is unable to clearly explain why spirantization (s-assibilation) applies neither to derivative nouns nor to non-nominal items in its entirety. By contrast, the analogy approach is able to overcome difficulties involved with the assibilation position. What is crucial to the analogy approach is that the nominal bases end with t rather than s. Evidence of t-ending bases is garnered from the base selection criteria, disparities between t-ending and s-ending inputs in loanwords. Unconventionally, I dare to contend that normative rules via orthography intervene as part of paradigm extension, alongside semantic conditioning and token/type frequency. Keywords: inflection, assibilation, analogy, base, affrication, spirantization, paradigm extension, orthography, token/type frequency 1. Introduction When it comes to Korean nominal inflection, two observations have captivated our attention. First, multiple-paradigms arise, as explored in previous literature (K. Ko 1989, Kenstowicz 1996, Y. Kang 2003b, Albright 2008 and many others).1 (1) Multiple-paradigms of /pʰatʰ/ ‘red bean’ unmarked nom2 acc dat/loc a. pʰat pʰaʧʰ-i pʰatʰ-ɨl pʰatʰ-e b. pʰat pʰaʧʰ-i pʰaʧʰ-ɨl pʰatʰ-e c.
    [Show full text]
  • Nominal Internal and External Topic and Focus: Evidence from Mandarin
    University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 20 Issue 1 Proceedings of the 37th Annual Penn Article 17 Linguistics Conference 2014 Nominal Internal and External Topic and Focus: Evidence from Mandarin Yu-Yin Hsu Bard College Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation Hsu, Yu-Yin (2014) "Nominal Internal and External Topic and Focus: Evidence from Mandarin," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 20 : Iss. 1 , Article 17. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol20/iss1/17 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol20/iss1/17 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Nominal Internal and External Topic and Focus: Evidence from Mandarin Abstract Taking the Cartographic Approach, I argue that the left periphery of nominals in Mandarin (i.e., the domain before demonstrative) has properties similar to the split-CP domain proposed by Rizzi (1997). In addition, I argue that the nominal internal domain (i.e., under demonstrative but outside of NP) encodes information structure in a way similar to the sentence-internal Topic and Focus that has been put forth in the literature. In this paper, I show that identifying Topic and Focus within a nominal at such two distinct domains helps to explain various so-called “reordering” and extraction phenomena affecting nominal elements, their interpretation, and their associated discourse functions. The result of this paper supports the parallelisms between noun phrases and clauses and it provides a new perspective to evaluate such theoretical implication, that is, the interaction between syntax and information structure.
    [Show full text]
  • A THEORY of NOMINAL CONCORD a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements for the Degree Of
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ A THEORY OF NOMINAL CONCORD A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LINGUISTICS by Mark Norris June 2014 The Dissertation of Mark Norris is approved: Professor Jorge Hankamer, Chair Professor Sandra Chung Professor James McCloskey Dean Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Mark Norris 2014 Table of Contents List of Figures vi List of Tables vii Abstract viii Dedication x Acknowledgments xi 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Themainpuzzle.................................. 3 1.2 EmpiricalBackground ... ...... ..... ...... ...... ... 5 1.2.1 Grammaticalsketch ........................... 6 1.2.2 Nominalmorphology........................... 8 1.2.3 Nominal morphophonology . 12 1.2.4 Datasources ............................... 14 1.2.5 ThecaseforEstonian...... ..... ...... ...... .... 16 1.3 Theoretical Background . 16 1.3.1 Some important syntactic assumptions . ..... 17 1.3.2 Some important morphological assumptions . ...... 20 1.4 Organization.................................... 21 2 Estonian Nominal Morphosyntax 23 2.1 Introduction.................................... 23 2.2 TheDPlayerinEstonian .. ...... ..... ...... ...... ... 25 2.2.1 Estonian does not exhibit properties of articleless languages . 28 2.2.2 Overt material in D0 inEstonian..................... 44 2.2.3 Evidence for D0 from demonstratives . 50 2.2.4 Implications for the Small Nominal Hypothesis . ....... 54 2.3 Cardinal numerals in Estonian . 60 2.3.1 The numeral’s “complement” . 60 2.3.2 Previous analyses of numeral-noun constructions . ......... 64 iii 2.4 Two structures for NNCs in Estonian . ..... 75 2.4.1 The size of the NP+ ............................ 76 2.4.2 The higher number feature in Estonian . 79 2.4.3 Higher adjectives and possessors . 81 2.4.4 Plural numerals in Estonian are specifiers .
    [Show full text]
  • Where Do New Words Like Boobage, Flamage, Ownage Come From? Tracking the History of ‑Age Words from 1100 to 2000 in the OED3
    Lexis Journal in English Lexicology 12 | 2018 Lexical and Semantic Neology in English Where do new words like boobage, flamage, ownage come from? Tracking the history of ‑age words from 1100 to 2000 in the OED3 Chris A. Smith Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/2167 DOI: 10.4000/lexis.2167 ISSN: 1951-6215 Publisher Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 Electronic reference Chris A. Smith, « Where do new words like boobage, flamage, ownage come from? Tracking the history of ‑age words from 1100 to 2000 in the OED3 », Lexis [Online], 12 | 2018, Online since 14 December 2018, connection on 03 May 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/2167 ; DOI : 10.4000/ lexis.2167 This text was automatically generated on 3 May 2019. Lexis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Where do new words like boobage, flamage, ownage come from? Tracking the hist... 1 Where do new words like boobage, flamage, ownage come from? Tracking the history of ‑age words from 1100 to 2000 in the OED3 Chris A. Smith Introduction 1 This study aims to trace the evolution of nominal ‑age formation in the OED3, from its origins as a product of borrowing from Latin or French from 1100, to its status as an innovative internal derivation process. The suffix ‑age continues today to coin newly- or non-lexicalized forms such as ownage, boobage, brushage, suggestive of the continued productivity of a long-standing century-old suffix. This remarkable success appears to distinguish ‑age from similar Latinate suffixes such as ‑ment and ‑ity (see Gadde [1910]) and raises the question of the reasons behind this adaptability.
    [Show full text]
  • Ikizu-Sizaki Orthography Orthography Statement
    IKIZUIKIZU----SIZAKISIZAKI ORTHOGRAPHY STATEMENT SIL International UgandaUganda----TanzaniaTanzania Branch IkizuIkizu----SizakiSizaki Orthography Statement Approved Orthography Edition Acknowledgements Many individuals contributed to this document by formatting the structure, contributing the language data, organizing the data, writing the document and by giving advice for editing the document. This document was authored by Holly Robinson, and it is an updated and expanded version of the Ikizu Orthography Sketch, which was authored by Michelle Smith and Hazel Gray. Additional contributors from SIL International include: Oliver Stegen, Helen Eaton, Leila Schroeder, Oliver Rundell, Tim Roth, Dusty Hill, and Mike Diercks. Contributors from the Ikizu language community include: Rukia Rahel Manyori and Ismael Waryoba (Ikizu Bible translators), as well as Kitaboka Philipo, Bahati M. Seleman, Joseph M. Edward, Magwa P. Marara, Mwassi Mong’ateko, Ibrahimu Ketera, Amosi Mkono, Dennis Paul, Nickson Obimbo, Muhuri Keng’are, Matutu Ngese. © SIL International UgandaUganda----TanzaniaTanzania Branch P.O Box 44456 00100 Nairobi, Kenya P.O. Box 60368 Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania P.O. Box 7444 Kampala, Uganda Approved Orthography Edition: April 2016 2 Contents 1.1.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... ......... 555 1.1 Classification ..................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century Jason Stanley Rutgers University
    Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century Jason Stanley Rutgers University In the Twentieth Century, Logic and Philosophy of Language are two of the few areas of philosophy in which philosophers made indisputable progress. For example, even now many of the foremost living ethicists present their theories as somewhat more explicit versions of the ideas of Kant, Mill, or Aristotle. In contrast, it would be patently absurd for a contemporary philosopher of language or logician to think of herself as working in the shadow of any figure who died before the Twentieth Century began. Advances in these disciplines make even the most unaccomplished of its practitioners vastly more sophisticated than Kant. There were previous periods in which the problems of language and logic were studied extensively (e.g. the medieval period). But from the perspective of the progress made in the last 120 years, previous work is at most a source of interesting data or occasional insight. All systematic theorizing about content that meets contemporary standards of rigor has been done subsequently. The advances Philosophy of Language has made in the Twentieth Century are of course the result of the remarkable progress made in logic. Few other philosophical disciplines gained as much from the developments in logic as the Philosophy of Language. In the course of presenting the first formal system in the Begriffsscrift , Gottlob Frege developed a formal language. Subsequently, logicians provided rigorous semantics for formal languages, in order to define truth in a model, and thereby characterize logical consequence. Such rigor was required in order to enable logicians to carry out semantic proofs about formal systems in a formal system, thereby providing semantics with the same benefits as increased formalization had provided for other branches of mathematics.
    [Show full text]
  • Long-Distance Reflexivization and Logophoricity in the Dargin Language Muminat Kerimova Florida International University
    Florida International University FIU Digital Commons MA in Linguistics Final Projects College of Arts, Sciences & Education 2017 Long-Distance Reflexivization and Logophoricity in the Dargin Language Muminat Kerimova Florida International University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/linguistics_ma Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Kerimova, Muminat, "Long-Distance Reflexivization and Logophoricity in the Dargin Language" (2017). MA in Linguistics Final Projects. 3. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/linguistics_ma/3 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in MA in Linguistics Final Projects by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida LONG-DISTANCE REFLEXIVIZATION AND LOGOPHORICITY IN THE DARGIN LANGUAGE A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in LINGUISTICS by Muminat Kerimova 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS LONG-DISTANCE REFLEXIVIZATION AND LOGOPHORICITY IN THE DARGIN LANGUAGE by Muminat Kerimova Florida International University, 2017 Miami, Florida Professor Ellen Thompson, Major Professor The study of anaphora challenges us to determine the conditions under which the pronouns of a language are associated with possible antecedents. One of the theoretical questions is whether the distribution of pronominal forms is best explained by a syntactic, semantic or discourse level analysis. A more practical question is how we distinguish between anaphoric elements, e.g. what are the borders between the notions of pronouns, locally bound reflexives and long-distance reflexives? The study analyzes the anaphora device saj in Dargin that is traditionally considered to be a long-distance reflexivization language.
    [Show full text]
  • The Neat Summary of Linguistics
    The Neat Summary of Linguistics Table of Contents Page I Language in perspective 3 1 Introduction 3 2 On the origins of language 4 3 Characterising language 4 4 Structural notions in linguistics 4 4.1 Talking about language and linguistic data 6 5 The grammatical core 6 6 Linguistic levels 6 7 Areas of linguistics 7 II The levels of linguistics 8 1 Phonetics and phonology 8 1.1 Syllable structure 10 1.2 American phonetic transcription 10 1.3 Alphabets and sound systems 12 2 Morphology 13 3 Lexicology 13 4 Syntax 14 4.1 Phrase structure grammar 15 4.2 Deep and surface structure 15 4.3 Transformations 16 4.4 The standard theory 16 5 Semantics 17 6 Pragmatics 18 III Areas and applications 20 1 Sociolinguistics 20 2 Variety studies 20 3 Corpus linguistics 21 4 Language and gender 21 Raymond Hickey The Neat Summary of Linguistics Page 2 of 40 5 Language acquisition 22 6 Language and the brain 23 7 Contrastive linguistics 23 8 Anthropological linguistics 24 IV Language change 25 1 Linguistic schools and language change 26 2 Language contact and language change 26 3 Language typology 27 V Linguistic theory 28 VI Review of linguistics 28 1 Basic distinctions and definitions 28 2 Linguistic levels 29 3 Areas of linguistics 31 VII A brief chronology of English 33 1 External history 33 1.1 The Germanic languages 33 1.2 The settlement of Britain 34 1.3 Chronological summary 36 2 Internal history 37 2.1 Periods in the development of English 37 2.2 Old English 37 2.3 Middle English 38 2.4 Early Modern English 40 Raymond Hickey The Neat Summary of Linguistics Page 3 of 40 I Language in perspective 1 Introduction The goal of linguistics is to provide valid analyses of language structure.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Challenges for Indexicalism LENNY CLAPP
    Three Challenges for Indexicalism LENNY CLAPP Abstract: Indexicalism is a strategy for defending truth-conditional semantics from under-determination arguments. According to indexicalism the class of indexical expres- sions includes not only the obvious indexicals, e.g. demonstratives and personal pronouns, but also unobvious indexical expressions, expressions which allegedly have been discovered to be indexicals. This paper argues that indexicalism faces significant obstacles that have yet to be overcome. The issue that divides indexicalism and truth-conditional pragmatics is first clarified. And then three general problems for indexicalism are presented, and some potential solutions that have been proposed in its defense are criticized. 1. Introduction The fundamental idea behind the family of views known as truth-conditional semantics is the following simple principle of truth-conditional compositionality: The truth-conditions expressed by an utterance of a declarative sentence S are determined by only two factors: (i) the logical form (LF) of S, and (ii) the semantic contents of the lexical items in S. Because of the influential work of Kaplan (1989) it is now a familiar point that in order to account for sentences that contain obvious indexicals—e.g. ‘I’, ‘now’, ‘she’, ‘that’ and perhaps some ‘relational terms’ such as ‘local’—a defender of truth-conditional semantics must reject this simple principle of truth-conditional compositionality in favor of a relativized principle: The truth-conditions expressed by an utterance of a declarative sentence Sina context c are determined by only two factors: (i) the logical form (LF) of S,and (ii) the semantic contents of the lexical items of Sinc.
    [Show full text]
  • A Distributional and Orthographic Aggregation Model for English Derivational Morphology
    A Distributional and Orthographic Aggregation Model for English Derivational Morphology Daniel Deutsch∗, John Hewitt∗ and Dan Roth Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania fddeutsch,johnhew,[email protected] Abstract Modeling derivational morphology to gen- erate words with particular semantics is useful in many text generation tasks, such as machine translation or abstractive ques- tion answering. In this work, we tackle the task of derived word generation. That is, given the word “run,” we attempt to gener- ate the word “runner” for “someone who runs.” We identify two key problems in generating derived words from root words and transformations: suffix ambiguity and Figure 1: Diagram depicting the flow of our aggregation model. Two models generate a hypothesis according to or- orthographic irregularity. We contribute a thogonal information; then one is chosen as the final model novel aggregation model of derived word generation. Here, the hypothesis from the distributional model generation that learns derivational transfor- is chosen. mations both as orthographic functions us- ing sequence-to-sequence models and as smaller parts. The AGENT derivational transforma- functions in distributional word embedding tion, for example, answers the question, what is the space. Our best open-vocabulary model, word for ‘someone who runs’? with the answer, a which can generate novel words, and our runner.1 Here, AGENT is spelled out as suffixing best closed-vocabulary model, show 22% -ner onto the root verb run. and 37% relative error reductions over cur- We tackle the task of derived word generation. rent state-of-the-art systems on the same In this task, a root word x and a derivational trans- dataset.
    [Show full text]