Midtterm paper Panalee48043020182yanhua zhou

Midterm Test for Syntax
1. Explain the correlation between gestures and meaning
A. Gestures------------------Meaning
This is a picture of the nature of the nature of language emerges. Language as a correlation between gestures and meaning. It’s not the case that every possible meaning that can be expressed is correlated with a unique, unanalyzable gesture, be it oral or manual. Rather ,each language a stock of meaning-bearing elements and different ways of combining them to express different meanings, and these ways of combining them are themselves meaningful. eg.’ Jim gives a bag to Jenny’. and ‘Jenny gives a bag to Jim’. They contain exactly the same meaning-bearing elements. Words, but they have different meanings because the words are combined differently in them. These different combination fall into the realm of syntax: the two sentences differ not in terms of the words in them but rather in terms of their syntax.
B. Gestures-----------Arrangement------------Meaning
(Morphology & Syntax)
This is a more complex and summary picture of the nature of language emerges. ‘syntax’ a verbal noun which literally means ‘arrangement’ or ‘setting out together’ .It refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentences .First and foremost, syntax deals with how sentences are constructed, and users of human languages employ a striking variety of possible arrangements of the elements in sentences. One of the most obvious yet important ways in which languages differ is the order of the main elements in a sentences .In English, eg. the subject comes before the verb and the direct object follows the verb. English: ‘I am listening a music’, the other hand, the subject and direct object both precede the verb, Lakhota ‘I music a listen’. They are same meaning, languages in which the order of words is normally irrelevant to the interpretation of which element is subject and which is object.
Morphology is concerned with the structure of words and morphological analysis is the process by which linguists break complex words down into their component parts. syntax and morphology make up what is traditionally referred to as ‘grammar’ an alternative term for it is Morphosyntax, which explicitly recognizes the important relationship between syntax and morphology .
In figure B, syntax makes possible the formulation of expressions with complex meanings out of elements with simple meanings. One of the defining features of human language is its unlimited nature; that is, the number of meaningful elements with syntactic principles. Much of the interest in language in psychology and cognitive science comes from what the study of the cognitive mechanisms underlying language use and acquisition can reveal about the human mind.
2. Use ‘Morphology’ analyze the flowing data.
a. *Barking dogs does not bite
This sentence should change ‘does’ into ‘do’, ‘barking dogs’ is nominative, ‘dogs’ [dôgz, d gz] is plural noun, ‘barking dogs’ is the third-person, ‘do’ is a auxiliary verb , ‘does’ should with the third- person singular, ‘do’ with first-person and second-person, third-person plural, so in this sentence should use ‘do’.
b. All men is create equal.
In this sentence ‘all men’ is nominative and ‘men’ is plural, ‘all men’ is third-person plural, so should change ‘is’ into ‘are’.
c. How long is your feet? One foot.
This sentence ask for a measure, and use ‘feet’ [fi:t] is a plural,‘ your feet’ are genitive and the third-person--–‘they’, so should change ‘is’ into ‘are’.
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in language, the general term covers prefixes, infixes and suffixes is affix. [dôgz, d gz]this form is clearly related phonologically, and the form of the plural suffix is predictable from the phonological shape of the end of the word to which it is added. This forms be viewed as conditioned variants of a single morpheme, its referred to as its allomorphs. It’s phonologically conditioned allomorphs, since the choice of allomorph is determined by the phonologically shape of the stem, but [men] and[fi:t] allomorphs of the plural morpheme which are not phonologically conditioned. The plural ‘man, foot’ are said to be morphologically conditioned, because they are not phonologically predictable and are idiosyncratic property of the word man, foot.
3. Experience of language-------language faculty-------------Grammar of L
------Competence/Performance
------Species---Specific
------Linguistic Acquisition Device—LAD
------Principles and Parameter Theory—PPT
How are these terms related? Explain each term
---------Competence/Performance
Competnece includes sentences that are too long to ever be spoken and sentences whose modifiers are so confusing that it would take too much processing power for us to understand them. These are things that shouldn't be ruled out because their faults are not grammatical. intuitively, they are things that a grammar shouldn't account for because they are, at root, dependent on non-grammatical aspects of the speakers and interpreters. Performance deals with sentences that speakers and interlocutors actually produce and deem grammatical or not. This can be a little messy since sleepiness, alertness, and intoxicatoin can inluence performance, and those things are not grammatical. This distinction bites both ways however. It allows syntacticians to say that certain sentences that are either ruled in or out by their grammar are okay by shifting the focus more to the performance side or more to the competence side. They can lean a little one way or the other to bolster their theories. Leaning too much to the competence side threatens to divorce the theory from empirical matters completely. Facts about speakers do seem to matter some to how syntax is processed. However, leaning too much towards performance results in sentences becoming ungrammatical according to the theory even though they are grammatical.
The competence consists in the knowledge of language which the language user in principle has; the performance is the result of the psychological process that employs this knowledge (in producing or in interpreting language utterances).
Preferences that language users display in dealing with syntactically ambiguous sentences constitute a prototypical example of a phenomenon that in the Chomskyan view belongs to the realm of performance.
Such grammars define the sentences of a language and the corresponding structural analyses, but they do not specify a probability ordering or any other ranking between the different sentences or between the different analyses of one sentence. This limitation is even more serious when a grammar is used for processing input which frequently contains mistakes. Such a situation occurs in processing spoken language. The output of a speech recognition system is always very imperfect, because such a system often only makes guesses about the identity of its input-words. In this situation the parsing mechanism has an additional task, which it doesn't have in dealing with correctly typed alpha-numeric input. The speech recognition module may discern several alternative word sequences in the input signal; only one of these is correct, and the parsing-module must employ its syntactic information to arrive at an optimal decision about the nature of the input. A simple yes/no judgment about the grammaticality of a word sequence is insufficient for this purpose: many word sequences are strictly speaking grammatical but very implausible; and the number of word sequences of this kind gets larger when a grammar accounts for a larger number of phenomena.
To construct effective language processing systems, therefore implement performance-grammars rather than competence-grammars. These performance-grammars must not only contain information about the structural possibilities of the general language system, but also about "accidental" details of the actual language use in a language community, which determine the language experiences of an individual, and thereby influence what kind of utterances this individual expects to encounter, and what structures and meanings these utterances are expected to have.
The linguistic perspective on performance involves the implicit assumption that language behaviour can be accounted for by a system that comprises a competence-grammar as an identifiable sub-component. But because of the ambiguity problem this assumption is computationally unattractive: if find criteria to prefer certain syntactic analyses above others, the efficiency of the whole process might benefit if these criteria were applied in an early stage, integrated with the strictly syntactic rules. This would amount to an integrated implementation of competence- and performance-notions.
Grammaticality-judgments are to be accounted for as performance phenomena which do not have a different cognitive status than other performance phenomena.
--------Species-Specific
Why Human elevated from all other creatures. First, there is an innate mechanism/module/hierarchical structure in the (unique) human brain which allows for both the acquisition and processing of language. Second, the ability to physically produce vowel sounds separates modern humans from both extinct hominid species and extant nonhuman primate species. Third, all languages are composed of phonetic syntax, arranged into a specific rule based grammar. Fourth, this grammar is innate and generalized enough to fit any and all possible languages. Fifth, syntax has ‘meaning’ and ‘context’ which is not limited to phonetic pronunciation (in nontonal languages at least). Finally, syntax and grammar are employed in such a way that they are not restricted in either space or time.
The waggle dance of bees, and the various species specific songs of whales and dolphins seem to indicate that this is a very tenuous assumption. One cannot separate brain evolution from physiological changes when examining the appearance of language in the hominid lineage. There seems to be a general agreement that human language is a recent evolutionary adaptation. As such, one would expect to find that the human brain has undergone some sort of task reorganization to accommodate this new function. The consensus of the research indicates that the left hemisphere (LH) is specialized for most aspects of language. Specifically, the left frontal area shows specialization for expressive language (Broca’s hypothesis), and the left temporal area appears to be specialized for receptive language (Wernicke hypothesis).However, the right hemisphere (RH) appears to regulate the comprehension and production of humor, metaphor and idioms, and controls the cohesion and coherence in narratives.
In addition, studies of children with left and right hemispheric lesions indicate that: 1) there is plasticity in the location of ‘language areas’; and 20 the brains of children show slight differences in functional areas when compared to those of adults. Spoken language consists of words, which have attributed (‘cultural’) meanings; follows a set of conventionally determined rules of syntax and grammar (also ‘cultural’); is not stagnant, as meanings and context can change over time; new words can form spontaneously (based upon old word forms or completely new combinations). A lot of emphasis has been placed upon the importance of the spoken word in modern human communication (citations of Shakespeare abound), however, the majority of our daily lives are spent listening (trying to decipher the world around us) or communicating in the familiar shorthand of grunts, snorts, barks of laughter, murmurs, and a general mangling of linguistic rules. The human infant undergoes many physiological and cognitive changes during its development. During the first few months after birth, the infant is physiologically constrained with regards to the types of vocalizations it can produce. With regard to language acquisition in children it is important to remember that: 1) children require models on which to base their early attempts at language; and 2) it takes years before children are aware of all of the possibilities afforded by their linguistic capabilities (i.e. separating emotive clues from the content of vocal speech).
Human specific abilities such as memory and information representation regarding sequences of sound and behaviour no doubt contribute to language acquisition.
---------Linguistic Acquisition Device—LAD
Language acquisition is the process by which the language capability develops in a human .First language acquisition concerns the development of language in children, while second language acquisition focuses on language development in adults as well. Emphasized either nature or nurture (see Nature versus nurture) as the most important explanatory factor for acquisition.
Linguistic theories hold that children learn through their natural ability to organize the laws of language, but cannot fully utilize this talent without the presence of other humans. This does not mean, however, that the child requires formal teaching of any sort. Chomsky claims that children are born with a hard-wired language acquisition device (LAD) in their brains . They are born with the major principles of language in place, but with many parameters to set (such as whether sentences in the language(s) they are to acquire must have explicit subjects). According to Chomsky, when the young child is exposed to a language, the LAD makes it possible for them to set the parameters and deduce the grammatical principles, because the principles are innate.
linguists are very close to the point where these parameters could be put together in a "periodic table of languages" as determined by their parameter features.Chomsky's claim then is that without an innate ability for language, human infants would be incapable of learning complete speech patterns in a natural human environment. This inability follows from the fact that the input available to the child - the speech of the community of adults around her - is insufficient, not providing the evidence required to determine what grammar the child should settle on. This is the poverty of the stimulus argument . This argument has been indicated to be in line with the Universal Grammar (UG), and has been proved by many researchers in first language acquisition as well as leading second language acquisition researchers such as Lydia White (McGill) and Suzanne Flyne (MIT).
--------------Principles and Parameter Theory—PPT
Principles and parameters is a popular framework in generative linguistics. Principles and parameters was largely formulated by the linguists Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik, though it was the culmination of the research of many linguists.
The central idea of principles and parameters is that a person’s syntactic knowledge can be modeled with two formal mechanisms:
∙ A finite set of fundamental principles that are common to all languages; e.g. that a sentence must always have a subject, even if it is mot overtly pronounced.
∙ A finite set of parameters that determine syntactic variability amongst languages; e.g. a binary parameter that determines whether or not the subject of a sentence must be overtly pronounced(this example is sometimes referred to as the Prodrop parameter).
Within this framework, the goal of linguistics is to identify all of the principles and parameters that are universal to human language(called: Universal Grammar)
A according to this framework, principles and parameters are part of a genetically innate universal grammar(UG)which all humans possess, barring any genetic disorders. Criticism of principles and parameters has most often been due to its stance on language acquisition. Although the framework is accepted by most mainstream linguists, it is very controversial amongst psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists due to the strong nativism it espouses in relation to language acquisition.
4. Compare Thai and English in terms of the following:
a. Case b. Number c. Sentence/Phrase Structure
A Case
In English, subjects generally precede predicates and complements follow them. Subjects generally have different case properties to complements. Subjects typically carry nominative case, whereas complements typically carry objective case.
e.g . Nominative objective genitive
I me my English
ฉัน ฉัน (ของ ฉัน ) Thai
I am fine. ฉัน สบายดี.
This is my brother. นี่ คือ พี่ ชาย ฉัน.
Help me! ช่วย ฉัน
In Thai, personal pronoun has not change.
word
RTGS
IPA
meaning
ผม
phom
[pʰǒm]
I/me (masculine; formal)
ดิฉัน
dichan
[dìːtɕʰɑ́n])
I/me (feminine; formal)
ฉัน
chan
[tɕʰɑ̌n]
I/me (masculine or feminine; informal)
คุณ
khun
[kʰun]
you (polite)
เธอ
thoe
[tʰɤː]
you (informal),she (informal)
เรา
rao
[raw]
we, I/me(casual)
เขา
khao
[kʰǎw]
he/she
มัน
man
[mɑn]
it
พวกเขา
phuak-khao
[pʰûɑk kʰǎw]
they
พี่
phi
[pʰîː]
older brother, sister, cousin (also often used loosely for older non-relatives)
น้อง
nong
[nɔ́ːŋ]
younger brother, sister, cousin (also often used loosely for younger non-relatives)
พวก phuak [pʰûɑk] can be used as a prefix to make other words plural e.g. phuak-pom พวกผม (we, masculine or feminine)
B Number
In English verbs agree in person and Number with their subjects. however, they don’t agree with their complements. so if we have a third person singular subject like ‘he’, we require the corresponding third person singular verb-form ‘goes’; but if we have a first person singular subject like ‘I’ or a first person plural subject like ‘we’ ,or a second person singular or plural subject like ‘you’, or a third person plural subject like ‘they’, we require the alternative form ‘go’.
E.g. I go home. (English) ฉัน กลับ บ้าน ( Thai)
We go home. เรา กลับ บ้าน
You go home. เธอ กลับ บ้าน
They go home. พวก เขา กลับ บ้าน
He goes home. เขา กลับ บ้าน
In Thai, the person and Number have no c
Phrase structure
Thai pronominal system varies according to the sex and relative status of speaker and audience.
Adjectives follow the noun. A duplicated adjective is used to mean "very" (with the first occurrence at a higher pitch) or "rather" (with both at the same pitch), e.g. คนอ้วนๆ (khon uan uan, IPA [kʰon uɑn uɑn]) "a very/rather fat person." Comparatives take the form "A X กว่า (kwa, IPA [kwaː]) B" (A is more X than B). The superlative is expressed as A X ที่สุด (thisut, IPA [tʰiːsut])).
Verbs do not inflect (i.e. do not change with person, tense, voice, mood or number) nor are there any participles. Duplication conveys the idea of doing the verb a lot. The passive voice is indicated by the insertion of ถูก (thuk, IPA [tʰuːk])) before the verb. Tense is conveyed by tense markers before or after the verb: กำลัง (kamlang, IPA [kɑmlɑŋ]) before the verb for ongoing action (like English -ing form) or อยู่ (yuu, IPA [juː]) after the verb for the present; จะ (cha, IPA [tɕaʔ]) before the verb for the future; ได้ (dai, IPA [dɑːj]) before the verb (or a time expression) for the past.
Many adverbs are the same as adjectives. Intensity can be expressed by a duplicated adjective. Adverbs usually follow the verb.
Nouns are uninflected and have no gender; there are no plural forms or articles. Plurals are expressed by adding "nouns of multitude" (ลักษณนาม) or classifiers in the form of noun-number-classifier, e.g. "teacher five person" for "five teachers".
While in English, such classifiers are usually absent ("four chairs") or optional ("two bottles of beer" or "two beers"), a classifier is almost always used in Thai (hence "chair four item" and "beer two bottle").
Subject pronouns are often omitted, while nicknames are often used where English would use a pronoun. There are specialised pronouns in the royal and sacred Thai languages.
In Thai, some compound words have the same form as sentence structure; as a result,
there may be an ambiguity between word and sentence as shown in the following example.

The compound word “หม้อหุงข้าว – rice cooker” is composed of three units; “หม้อ-pot
(noun)”, “หุง-cook (verb)” and “ข้าว-rice (noun).” The word can alternatively be viewed
as a sentence “A pot cooks rice,” with the structure “Subject+Verb+Object.”
Consider the string “หม้อหุงข้าวสวยดี” as a more complex example, there are two
substrings “หม้อหุงข้าว” and “ข้าวสวย.” Both substrings are possibly words and
sentences simultaneously. This example can be interpreted as follows:
English: A rice cooker is beautiful.
Thai: หม้อหุงข้าวสวยดี.
Sentence Pattern: Subject+Verb+Modifier
b. English: A pot is good for cooking steamed rice.
Thai: หม้อหุงข้าวสวยดี
Sentence Pattern: Subject+Verb+Object+Modifier
c. English: A pot can cook rice that looks delicious.
Thai: หม้อหุงข้าวสวยดี.
Sentence Pattern: Subject+Verb+Object+Modifier+Modifier

English sentence structure and syntactic phrase constructions
S -> NP VP
NP -> (Det) (Adj) n (PP)
PP -> Prep NP
VP -> v (NP)(PP)

Those of Thai can also be rewritten as
S -> NP VP
NP -> n(Adj)(Class) (Det)
PP -> Prep NP
VP -> v(NP)(PP)
It is remarkably noted that the sentence

English Sentence Pattern
1 . NP BE ADJ
2. NP BE ADV
3 .NP BE NP
4 NP V
5. NP V PP
6. NP V NP
7. NP V NP NP


Thai Sentence Pattern I
1. NP ADJ
2.NP BE ADV
3. NP BE NP
4. NP V
5. NP V PP
6. NP V NP
7. NP V NP NP

English sample sentences
1. Meg is beautiful.
2. The little cat is here.
3. My mother is a nurse.
4. They laugh.
5. She walk in the garden.
6. Pretty girl buys a dress.
7. A nice man gives the girl a dress.



Thai sample sentences
เม็ก สวย Meg beautiful
แมว ตัว เล็ก อยู่ ที่ นี่ cat small is here
แม่ ของ ฉัน เป็น นางพยาบาล mother of mine is nurse
พวก เขา หัว เราะ they laugh
เธอ เดิน ไป สวน she walk in garden
เด็ก ผู้ หญิง น่า รัก ซื้อ เสื้อ ผ้า girl pretty buy cloth
ผู้ ชาย ใจ ดี ให้ เสื้อ ผ้า แก่ เด็ก ผู้ หญิง man nice give cloth to girl

Eng. VP -> (Modal) (have-en) (be-ing) V (NP) (PP)
Thai VP -> (Modal) (be-ing) V (NP) (have-en) (PP)

English sentences Thai sentences
What day is today? วันนี้เป็นวันอะไร
Taxi! This way, please. แท็กซี่ มาทางนี้หน่อย
How much do you charge me? คุณจะคิดค่าโดยสารเท่าไร
Is there a television in that room? มีโทรทัศน์ในห้องนั้นไหม
How much does it cost? ราคาเท่าไร

· Words with tense inflections like “do”
· The present tense inflection of verbs using for plural subjects such as “do”
· The present tense inflection of verbs and singular such as “does.”
· The past tense inflection of verb such as the word “did”.
Past participle such as “done.

5 USE Constituent and Construction
[S [N John][Adverb P [ADV[normally][VP [V smokes][NP[N cigarettes]] ] [[PP[P in] [NP the [N morning]] PP].
This clause comprises three constituents(structural units) the function which is already familiar namely the subject ‘John’, the predicate ‘smokes’ and the complement ‘cigarettes’ since ‘in the morning’ does not refer to one of the entities directly involved in the act of smoking, it isn’t an argument of the predicate ‘smokes’. On the contrary, it simply serves to provide additional information about the action ‘smoke’ frequency and time, when the smoking activity takes place. In sentence, providing /optional additional information about the time or place(or manner, purpose, etc) of an activity is said serve as an adjunction. So ‘normally’ and ‘in the morning’ are both adjunctions. Constituents in this sentence, the NP ‘the morning’ is a constituent of the PP “in the morning’ which is a constituent of the VP “smokes cigarettes in the morning’, ‘normally is a frequency adverb, ‘normally smokes cigarettes’ is a adverb phrase.
6 Underline the equal constituent with the underline one.
a. Micheal Moore wrote a book about the President George Bush and Donal Rumsfeld.
b. Kenny G performed his concert in Bangkok and in Uttaradit
c. His Majesty the King is highly regarded not only as the talented Jazz musician but also as the great scientist.

name: Panalee yanhua zhou 48043020182