Lately I've been thinking a lot about the mainstream approach to linguistic inquiry, specifically about the idea of innate grammar. Although it was the idea of innate grammar that got me interested in linguistics in the first place, and although I think it a beautiful, elegant, and startling theory, I'm not so sure it's at all true. Why? The reasons are vague and unscientific, but warrant further research. And by "research" I mean I should hunt around for what others have to say about this, because I haven't tried that hard yet! So, some reasons:
1. I'm teaching ESL to mostly Asian students. I've had some students complain that as their English improves their native language weakens. This is mostly vocabulary loss, but I've heard complaints about grammar changes as well. Under my understanding of the current mainstream theory, this should be impossible. Once the parameters are set (or however it's thought about these days) they should be set for good.
2. The longer teachers have been teaching, the worse their English gets. One teacher in particular, who's been teaching for about five years, frequently leaves out articles from noun phrases and drops objects for obligatorily transitive verbs. These are, I would say, two of the three most noticeable and common errors that even our most advanced students make. The errors in teachers' English is clearly entirely the result of exposure to Asian ESL English.
3. The third of the three most common advanced student errors is using the wrong preposition in phrasal verbs and other verbs and nouns that require prepositions to link an object. E.g. *I gave it for my friend. Often these prepositions have no "logical" connection to their use. I've noticed from reading older novels that these "meaningless' prepositions change rapidly. Couldn't this be because they are connected by memory, not grammar?
4. Adverbs. And marginal sentences in general. There are many adverbs that can be in many places in the sentence. Most interestingly, there are often marginal places as well as good and bad places. Doesn't this sound like the meaning is okay, but we just don't normally say it that way so it sounds odd? E.g. (my judgements):
* Quickly the enemy will have destroyed the village.
?? The enemy quickly will have destroyed the village.
? The enemy will quickly have destroyed the village.
The enemy will have quickly destroyed the village.
* The enemy will have destroyed quickly the village.
The enemy will have destroyed the village quickly.
5. Language change. It should be nearly impossible to language as a whole to change under (my understanding of) the current model. Change can only come as a result of the child's error in hearing or understanding. How can it be transmitted to the community as a whole? How could young working class women lead change if grammar is set in infancy? If, on the other hand, grammar is linked to familiarity, change might be driven by what we hear around us as adults.
6. I can mimic accents. Well, I'm not very good at it, but some people are. Point being, the sounds we have access to are not set in stone, even in our native languages.
At the advice of one Matt Tucker, I'm going to read some Exemplar Theory and perhaps come back with something less hand-waving. For now, just some thoughts.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Friday, October 31, 2008
Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd.
Apparently, the Welsh reads "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."
As wondrous, important, and exciting language revitalisation efforts are, I am pleased to see they can lead to such glorious and absurd blunders. Somehow, this seems even better than Engrish.
For the full story...
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Undercover at a Sociolinguistics Conference
Since I plan to return the land of no sociolinguists for my Ph.D., I decided that while living out here in eastern Canada, I should make an effort to absorb what knowledge I can about the ‘other side’ – I decided to hop in a car to Ottawa and attend the second CVC (Change and Variation in Canada). As it is, now I feel like I can contribute a little to the issue that Meaghan brought up, and give my impressions of the conference.
So, of course, it’s true – there is quite lack of communication between the socio- and theoretical linguistics, and where I noticed this lack the most is with respect to formal semantics. While (most of) the variationist studies presented at the conference coded for linguistic factors (as well as social factors), the majority of these factors are phonological or morphosyntactic. If there is reference to semantics, it is always to lexical semantics as opposed to formal semantics. For instance, there was a great presentation by Tanya Romaniuk on the variation between the future temporal reference markers will and be going to, which used the first season of Friends as its corpus. While syntactic features like sentence mode (and other things) were coded for, as well as notions of lexical semantics (like whether a lexical meaning of ‘motion’ was significant) no notions of formal semantics were coded for. This was surprising to me since I believe that any current paper referring to will and be going to, if written from a theoretical point of view, would cite Copley 2002. Copley 2002 posits that the difference between will and be going to is a difference of aspect. She defines three different aspectual readings – bare, generic and progressive, and posits that while will can be interpreted as either bare or generic, while be going to can only be interpreted as progressive. According to Copley’s definitions, the generic and progressive readings of the future can be characterized by a formal semantic property - the Sub-interval Property (SIP) – while the bare reading cannot. I was curious as to whether the results of Tanya’s variationist study would differ if these three different aspectual contexts, and this formal semantic property, was coded for as well.
Another thing that has always popped out at me whenever sociolinguistics was concerned was the fact that the majority if sociolinguistic study is done on dialects of well-studied languages like English and French. As far as I know, there is no sociolinguistic research that takes, for example, a First Nation’s language as the object of study. The most common response I received when voicing this observation during the “Speed-date a Variationist” session (more on that later!) was that in order for someone to do research on variation (i.e., the coding part at least), it is difficult/impossible to do unless one is a native speaker of the language, and it is especially difficult/impossible if the language is understudied and few linguists have a good understanding of the grammar of the language. Although there’s really no great way of solving this problem (short of finding native speakers of these languages who are interested in social identity and statistics?), I thought it was a bit of a shame for at least two reasons. One, from a social perspective, it would be interesting to do variationist research on reserves, in that I think reserves might represent a unique kind of social situation. Second, from a linguistic perspective, languages with different grammatical structures should offer different patterns of change. To clarify that last part, I’ll bring up another example. One of the students from U of T (Derek Denis) presented about deontic modality in English, and one of the comments afterwards was that the rising usage of have to as representing deontic modality, as opposed to the older form must, might be triggered by the rising usage of must as an epistemic modal (cf. Thibault 1983, for this analysis for French). As is well known, in English, modals are lexically encoded with their strength of quantification (existential or universal), while they may vary with respect to their modal bases such that the same lexical item can act as a deontic modal, an epistemic modal, a circumstantial modal, a dispositional modal, etc. Now, Matthewson et. al (2006) [3] have argued that in St’at’imcets, modals arrange themselves in a different way such that the same lexical item is encoded with a modal base, but may vary with respect to the strength of quantification [4]. Because of this, I thought it would be really interesting if it was possible to do a study on how the usage of modals in Salish change over time. If we take Matthewson et. al (2006)’s proposal as an initial assumption [5], then we would expect a different pattern of language change in St’at’imcets as compared to English, as ambiguity with respect to one’s modal base could not act as a trigger for change. Whether ambiguity in the strength of quantification could trigger change in another direction would be really interesting.
Abstracting away from the content of the conference, I want to say that there were a lot of aspects about the organization of the conference that I thought were really cool – the two aspects that impressed me most were the two sessions not dedicated to presentations. There was one tour of the sociolinguistics lab at uOttawa, where I thought I was going to die in organizational, colour-coded bliss. Everything was so pretty and well-organized – so inspiring! (I desperately want a colour-coded Blackfoot lab.) The second session, which at first horrified me, but in hindsight was quite cool, was the session titled “Speed-date a Variationist.” In this session all participants in the conference (including me, the covert theoretical linguist) sat in 16 four-minute speed-dates with one of the other participants. Although some parts were very awkward (i.e., the 16 times I had to explain why I was at the conference even though I’m not a variationist…), it was also an excellent chance for nearly everyone to learn a little bit about people that you would otherwise only know by sight, and ask questions that you might not have gotten the chance to ask otherwise. This kind of session is probably only feasible for small conferences, but it was a good ice-breaker for the party afterwards. In the end, after attending the conference I haven't been converted to becoming a sociolinguist, but I am quite fond of their conferences : D
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Monday, April 21, 2008
Focus and Presupposition on Anglophone grizzly bears?
WARNING: This is a ridiculous post. This is what happens when term papers stress me out, and I somehow end up trapped wandering through the Wikipedia labyrinth.
According to Wikipedia, grizzly bears speak English:
My Question: Are grizzly bears bilingual?
I ask this because the article doesn't just state that they speak English, it states that they "also speak english." The problem is that there's no previously mentioned language. They speak English in addition to Inuktitut? French? Grizzly?
Now, it could be the case that "also" is contrastively picking out "grizzly bears" among other speakers of English, as opposed to contrastively picking out English among the languages grizzly bears speak, but since this is an article on Grizzly bears, I don't think this is what the vandaliser had in mind.
Another possible option is that the predicate "speak English" is being contrastively picked out, among the other things that are normally predicated of grizzly bears, such as "being listed as threatened in the contiguous United States, and endangered in parts of Canada." This is probably the most likely, but I've copied and pasted the paragraph for your analyzing pleasure, in case the Wikipedia article gets fixed, erm, I mean edited, before you get a chance to see it.
Moral of the story: Everything you find on the Wikipedia is always true.
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FURTHER NOTE: Ursus arctos horribilis are also awesome, according to the sidebar.
According to Wikipedia, grizzly bears speak English:
My Question: Are grizzly bears bilingual?
I ask this because the article doesn't just state that they speak English, it states that they "also speak english." The problem is that there's no previously mentioned language. They speak English in addition to Inuktitut? French? Grizzly?
Now, it could be the case that "also" is contrastively picking out "grizzly bears" among other speakers of English, as opposed to contrastively picking out English among the languages grizzly bears speak, but since this is an article on Grizzly bears, I don't think this is what the vandaliser had in mind.
Another possible option is that the predicate "speak English" is being contrastively picked out, among the other things that are normally predicated of grizzly bears, such as "being listed as threatened in the contiguous United States, and endangered in parts of Canada." This is probably the most likely, but I've copied and pasted the paragraph for your analyzing pleasure, in case the Wikipedia article gets fixed, erm, I mean edited, before you get a chance to see it.
Moral of the story: Everything you find on the Wikipedia is always true.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Legal status
The grizzly bear is listed as threatened in the contiguous United States, and endangered in parts of Canada. In May 2002, the Canadian Species at Risk Act listed the Prairie population (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba range) of grizzly bears as being extirpated in Canada[10]. In Alaska and parts of Canada however, the grizzly is still legally shot for sport by hunters. On January 9, 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove Yellowstone grizzlies from the list of threatened and protected species. In March 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "de-listed"the population, effectively removing Endangered Species Act protections for grizzlies in the Yellowstone National Park area. Grizzly bears also speak english.
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FURTHER NOTE: Ursus arctos horribilis are also awesome, according to the sidebar.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Public Service Announcement:
Dear every linguist with access to Praat and a need for fundamental frequency readings:
Do not, for the love of everything you hold dear, use the pitch tracker for this purpose! You will get results like, for a brief example, the following*:
(Click for larger version.)
Do you see the problem? If not, try looking again:
I'm pretty sure my f0 did not, in fact, sharply drop to 0Hz and, just as sharply, return to 166Hz. And, though I'd like to think that I had superhuman laryngeal muscles, I'm pretty sure this dramatic, nigh-instantaneous change is physiologically improbable. This is but one of the myriad ways that the Praat pitch tracker will fail spectacularly to give you adequate results. "All right, Aislin," you may be thinking, "I understand that Praat's pitch tracker is epic fail. But how else am I to get my sweet, succulent f0 data?" Well, fear not! Calculating f0 your own self is dead easy, and I'm going to gently guide you.**
For those with less of an acoustic background, here's the short version of how it works: when your vocal folds vibrate, they create a complex periodic sound wave, the sum of all the harmonics. The fundamental frequency is the same as the first harmonic (h1), and all the harmonics are multiples of the fundamental. This means that the distance between any two harmonics is also equal to the fundamental. Because of this, the quickest and easiest way to calculate f0 involves measuring the harmonics.
To see the harmonics, we're going to use narrowband spectral data. Narrowband gives you worse time resolution, but better frequency resolution, so you can make out the individual harmonics better. Under Spectrogram settings, you can set the window length to 0.03s, and that should do. It'll look something like this:
Notice how you can immediately see that the pitch tracker's display contradicts the spectral data. For this reason, if you must use a pitch tracker display, it's best to show it over a narrowband spectrogram to demonstrate that it's not doing anything heinous.
Now that you've got a narrowband spectrogram, you need to take a slice of it using the Spectrogram menu. You'll see evenly-spaced bumps, each of which is a harmonic. If you see one right at the left edge, though, be careful! That's most likely an artifact of an imperfect mic. If you measure the space between that first bump and the next, you'll find that it's shorter than the spaces between the rest. Also, adult female speakers like myself generally have an f0 of around 200Hz, so the fact that this bump's peak occurs at ~30Hz is a big tipoff.
You want to pick a higher harmonic, maybe h10, and look at the smallest possible chunk of the spectrum that shows you this harmonic. Both of these cut down on measurement error, making your reading as accurate as possible! Place your cursor at the very tippy-top of your selected harmonic, and Praat will tell you what the frequency is. Once you have the value of your whateverth harmonic, divide it by whatever to get the h1. (i.e., divide the value for h10 by 10, h11 by 11, h9 by 9...) Remember that h1 equals the f0, so you are done. In summation:
Anyone who wants to use your data down the line will thank you.
___
*This represents two tokens of myself saying 'high'.
**If your training has included much acoustic phonetics, you're probably rolling your eyes right now. Sorry, but my recent experiences with tonal data tell me this PSA is desperately needed.
Do not, for the love of everything you hold dear, use the pitch tracker for this purpose! You will get results like, for a brief example, the following*:
(Click for larger version.)
Do you see the problem? If not, try looking again:
I'm pretty sure my f0 did not, in fact, sharply drop to 0Hz and, just as sharply, return to 166Hz. And, though I'd like to think that I had superhuman laryngeal muscles, I'm pretty sure this dramatic, nigh-instantaneous change is physiologically improbable. This is but one of the myriad ways that the Praat pitch tracker will fail spectacularly to give you adequate results. "All right, Aislin," you may be thinking, "I understand that Praat's pitch tracker is epic fail. But how else am I to get my sweet, succulent f0 data?" Well, fear not! Calculating f0 your own self is dead easy, and I'm going to gently guide you.**
For those with less of an acoustic background, here's the short version of how it works: when your vocal folds vibrate, they create a complex periodic sound wave, the sum of all the harmonics. The fundamental frequency is the same as the first harmonic (h1), and all the harmonics are multiples of the fundamental. This means that the distance between any two harmonics is also equal to the fundamental. Because of this, the quickest and easiest way to calculate f0 involves measuring the harmonics.
To see the harmonics, we're going to use narrowband spectral data. Narrowband gives you worse time resolution, but better frequency resolution, so you can make out the individual harmonics better. Under Spectrogram settings, you can set the window length to 0.03s, and that should do. It'll look something like this:
Notice how you can immediately see that the pitch tracker's display contradicts the spectral data. For this reason, if you must use a pitch tracker display, it's best to show it over a narrowband spectrogram to demonstrate that it's not doing anything heinous.
Now that you've got a narrowband spectrogram, you need to take a slice of it using the Spectrogram menu. You'll see evenly-spaced bumps, each of which is a harmonic. If you see one right at the left edge, though, be careful! That's most likely an artifact of an imperfect mic. If you measure the space between that first bump and the next, you'll find that it's shorter than the spaces between the rest. Also, adult female speakers like myself generally have an f0 of around 200Hz, so the fact that this bump's peak occurs at ~30Hz is a big tipoff.
You want to pick a higher harmonic, maybe h10, and look at the smallest possible chunk of the spectrum that shows you this harmonic. Both of these cut down on measurement error, making your reading as accurate as possible! Place your cursor at the very tippy-top of your selected harmonic, and Praat will tell you what the frequency is. Once you have the value of your whateverth harmonic, divide it by whatever to get the h1. (i.e., divide the value for h10 by 10, h11 by 11, h9 by 9...) Remember that h1 equals the f0, so you are done. In summation:
Anyone who wants to use your data down the line will thank you.
___
*This represents two tokens of myself saying 'high'.
**If your training has included much acoustic phonetics, you're probably rolling your eyes right now. Sorry, but my recent experiences with tonal data tell me this PSA is desperately needed.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Taylor Mali stand-up routine
For your viewing pleasure, a stand-up routine predicated on the (supposedly) increasing usage of evidential/epistemic tags, or decreasing usage of outright declarative assertions, in English:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4
The person doing the routine [1], Taylor Mali, presents himself as having issues with the lack of certainty conveyed by utterances tagged with elements like "you know," or with a question intonation. I wonder if this stand-up routine would fly in front of native speakers of Cree and Quechua, where utterances with evidential/epistemic interpretations are more common than outright assertions?
Not sure what else to say when one of my favourite procrastination methods (Stumble-Upon) leads me to a YouTube video that is directly relevant to my research. Maybe the research gods are trying to tell me that I've been procrastinating too much and should get back to work...
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[1] I've looked him up a bit - I thought he was a comedian, but it turns out he's a teacher and "slam poet" - so maybe it isn't a stand-up routine, but a poetry slam.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4
The person doing the routine [1], Taylor Mali, presents himself as having issues with the lack of certainty conveyed by utterances tagged with elements like "you know," or with a question intonation. I wonder if this stand-up routine would fly in front of native speakers of Cree and Quechua, where utterances with evidential/epistemic interpretations are more common than outright assertions?
Not sure what else to say when one of my favourite procrastination methods (Stumble-Upon) leads me to a YouTube video that is directly relevant to my research. Maybe the research gods are trying to tell me that I've been procrastinating too much and should get back to work...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[1] I've looked him up a bit - I thought he was a comedian, but it turns out he's a teacher and "slam poet" - so maybe it isn't a stand-up routine, but a poetry slam.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Nerd #5
This is to welcome Josh Levy to the blog. Huzzah!
Josh is a third year student of linguistics and music. He's got a great ear and eye for interesting language data, and is also just a swell guy. Glad to have you with us, Josh!
Josh is a third year student of linguistics and music. He's got a great ear and eye for interesting language data, and is also just a swell guy. Glad to have you with us, Josh!
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Max Headroom in the phonetics lab
This report has been circulating, in slightly less detailed form, on the BBC. It describes researchers 'reading off' speech signals in a coma patient. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the BBC story is a trimmed-down version of the New Scientist story (already under 700 words), with a few quotes from other brain researchers thrown in for good measure, and, of course, filled with suggestions that the man in the coma is about to be turned into Max Headroom. This is not entirely true.
First of all, from the NS article, it looks like the Boston University Speech Lab is responsible for this research, but I can't find any reference to the project on their website. The description is of an invasive technique, implanting electrodes directly in poor MH's brain. (His real name seems to be Eric, but one would think they'd have changed it for the purposes of reporting the research anyway, so I'm going to stick with MH.) Sadly, their computer can't recognize 'N-N-New Coke' in the output of this little bundle of neurons, but it can apparently distinguish /u/, /o/, and /i/, and do so with 80% accuracy. Evidently they tell MH to 'think hard about saying /u/' and he complies in his comatose state. Until the details come out, I'll be a bit skeptical about what's really going on.
Nevertheless, what is there on the BU speech lab website is interesting: first, brain imaging data for speech production, most notably the apparent location in the brain of certain articulatory signals. Second, a computer model which they use to situate what they think these groups of neurons are doing. I won't evaluate either one, but if we believe their brain maps, and if we believe they've stuck the electrodes in the right place, then it seems like they are really reading off something like articulatory information.
This is somewhat interesting once you realize that the actual form that articulatory information takes is still up for debate. On the one hand, there's the fairly obvious theory that, when we speak, we just send instructions to the articulators. Of course, if sounds are stored in this articulatory format, then perception must involve something like the Motor Theory of speech perception, which means that you have some (presumably built-in) hardware for matching up speech sounds that you hear with the gestures that produced them. This is how you match up the sounds you hear with stored forms, which just tell you what to do.
On the other hand, a goal-based theory of production (subscription to Journal of Phonetics required) says something like the reverse. The information you need to send to the motor system is (mostly) a bunch of acoustic targets. You might also have articulatory targets, but the key thing is that you can just send 'I want a low f2' to the low-level system and it will work it out automatically, presumably, again through some built in mapping. So when we map out what parts of the brain are lighting up when we say /i/ etc, we shoul consistently see things corresponding to these more abstracted features. If we don't, then we can't tell whether the goal-based theory is right.
Of course, this is not so easy to tell for /i/, since the mapping between acoustics and articulation for the vowel space is fairly trivial, but if we had enough brain data we should in principle be able to tell; do the bits that light up for particular sounds in production seem to correlate with acoustics or articulation? Clearly, the articulatory signals have to be there, but if we can't see the acoustics, we don't have any reason to believe in the goal-based theory. This is factoring out any methodological concerns, of course, which I take it are acute with brain imaging. But it would be interesting to look (and if anyone wants to hunt through the stuff on the BU Speech Lab web site and try and find data bearing on this question feel free).
First of all, from the NS article, it looks like the Boston University Speech Lab is responsible for this research, but I can't find any reference to the project on their website. The description is of an invasive technique, implanting electrodes directly in poor MH's brain. (His real name seems to be Eric, but one would think they'd have changed it for the purposes of reporting the research anyway, so I'm going to stick with MH.) Sadly, their computer can't recognize 'N-N-New Coke' in the output of this little bundle of neurons, but it can apparently distinguish /u/, /o/, and /i/, and do so with 80% accuracy. Evidently they tell MH to 'think hard about saying /u/' and he complies in his comatose state. Until the details come out, I'll be a bit skeptical about what's really going on.
Nevertheless, what is there on the BU speech lab website is interesting: first, brain imaging data for speech production, most notably the apparent location in the brain of certain articulatory signals. Second, a computer model which they use to situate what they think these groups of neurons are doing. I won't evaluate either one, but if we believe their brain maps, and if we believe they've stuck the electrodes in the right place, then it seems like they are really reading off something like articulatory information.
This is somewhat interesting once you realize that the actual form that articulatory information takes is still up for debate. On the one hand, there's the fairly obvious theory that, when we speak, we just send instructions to the articulators. Of course, if sounds are stored in this articulatory format, then perception must involve something like the Motor Theory of speech perception, which means that you have some (presumably built-in) hardware for matching up speech sounds that you hear with the gestures that produced them. This is how you match up the sounds you hear with stored forms, which just tell you what to do.
On the other hand, a goal-based theory of production (subscription to Journal of Phonetics required) says something like the reverse. The information you need to send to the motor system is (mostly) a bunch of acoustic targets. You might also have articulatory targets, but the key thing is that you can just send 'I want a low f2' to the low-level system and it will work it out automatically, presumably, again through some built in mapping. So when we map out what parts of the brain are lighting up when we say /i/ etc, we shoul consistently see things corresponding to these more abstracted features. If we don't, then we can't tell whether the goal-based theory is right.
Of course, this is not so easy to tell for /i/, since the mapping between acoustics and articulation for the vowel space is fairly trivial, but if we had enough brain data we should in principle be able to tell; do the bits that light up for particular sounds in production seem to correlate with acoustics or articulation? Clearly, the articulatory signals have to be there, but if we can't see the acoustics, we don't have any reason to believe in the goal-based theory. This is factoring out any methodological concerns, of course, which I take it are acute with brain imaging. But it would be interesting to look (and if anyone wants to hunt through the stuff on the BU Speech Lab web site and try and find data bearing on this question feel free).
Monday, November 12, 2007
Bemoaning the Loss of English Subjuctive
The New York Times published an article today about efficiency in the workplace. The book is called The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. This is what Po Bronson had to say about it:
'“It’s not saying the ‘20-Hour Workweek,’” Mr. Bronson explained. “That would be something that lots of people can live. It’s 40 hours a week versus four. It’s very important in the tech world that consequences are exponential, not geometrical.”'
So what does he mean? Does he mean that in the tech world, concequences are defined as being exponential, not geometric (declarative reading)? Or that the tech world isn't going to care unless the consequences are exponential (subjunctive reading)?
Now, if English still had a subjunctive in regular use, I would know: if he meant this subjuctively he would have said "It’s very important in the tech world that consequences be exponential, not geometrical." Since he didn't, this is declarative. Unfortunately, I think he might actually have intended this to be read subjunctively.
Now, I know what you're thinking: wait a minute, aren't linguists supposed to be all desciptivist and shun prescriptivism? Well, to that I say two things:
1. I come from an intensely prescriptivist background. It's not that easy to throw off, you know!
2. The main reason I'm posting this is to talk about language change. What happens when a change causes confusion? Doesn't it usually ultimately fail? Or, something comes in to take its place?
It seems to me that the loss of the subjunctive is too far along to reverse itself. Once language change gets going in earnest, there doesn't seem to be any stopping it. But if situations like this keep coming up, where I can't figure out from context which of two ambiguous meanings was intended, can we expect to see something come in to take its place? Maybe a slightly awkward injection of a modal, like "It’s very important in the tech world that consequences should be exponential, not geometrical"?
'“It’s not saying the ‘20-Hour Workweek,’” Mr. Bronson explained. “That would be something that lots of people can live. It’s 40 hours a week versus four. It’s very important in the tech world that consequences are exponential, not geometrical.”'
So what does he mean? Does he mean that in the tech world, concequences are defined as being exponential, not geometric (declarative reading)? Or that the tech world isn't going to care unless the consequences are exponential (subjunctive reading)?
Now, if English still had a subjunctive in regular use, I would know: if he meant this subjuctively he would have said "It’s very important in the tech world that consequences be exponential, not geometrical." Since he didn't, this is declarative. Unfortunately, I think he might actually have intended this to be read subjunctively.
Now, I know what you're thinking: wait a minute, aren't linguists supposed to be all desciptivist and shun prescriptivism? Well, to that I say two things:
1. I come from an intensely prescriptivist background. It's not that easy to throw off, you know!
2. The main reason I'm posting this is to talk about language change. What happens when a change causes confusion? Doesn't it usually ultimately fail? Or, something comes in to take its place?
It seems to me that the loss of the subjunctive is too far along to reverse itself. Once language change gets going in earnest, there doesn't seem to be any stopping it. But if situations like this keep coming up, where I can't figure out from context which of two ambiguous meanings was intended, can we expect to see something come in to take its place? Maybe a slightly awkward injection of a modal, like "It’s very important in the tech world that consequences should be exponential, not geometrical"?
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Syntax or Lexicon?
Ok, if we're gonna get this blog started again, I thought a good way to do this would be to ask a question.
So, I've got a question. A rather vague "how do you feel about this approach?" question, that's been a bit of a topic in my syntax class.
I've recently been trying to make my way through"The Normal Course of Events" by Hagit Borer. One of her main themes is that several phenomena traditionally accounted for through lexical specification should actually be accounted for through structural/syntactic means.
For instance, Borer argues that the difference between mass nouns and count nouns, which is traditionally accounted for by stating that each noun in the lexicon is specified as either mass or count[1], is actually structurally represented, so that count nouns have more functional structure than mass nouns.
This is extended to the verbal domain as well. So the difference between unergative and unaccusative verbs, argues Borer, is not a lexical difference, such that "run" is specified as an "unergative" verb, while "arrive" is specified as an "unaccusative" verb, but is actually a structural difference such that unergative verbs have more functional structure than unaccusatives.
And again, the difference between telic and atelic verbs is that telic verbs have more functional structure than atelic verbs.
So what do you think about this approach that consists of taking all of the information out of the lexicon and instead representing it structurally? Like it or don't like it? Good move or bad move? Why or why not?
As for me, going with my gut feeling, I kind of like the idea that everything is structurally represented (so that even a notion like "verb" and "noun" is derived in the syntax). But then I wonder: what does such an approach mean for languages like Yucatec Mayan?
In Yucatec Mayan, there are (at least) two types of intransitive verbs: inherently telic, and inherently atelic intransitives. The inherently telic verbs, when unmarked, are interpreted as (hence the name) telic. They need to be overtly marked by an atelic morpheme to be interpreted as atelic. The inherently atelic verbs, on the other hand, when unmarked, are interpreted as atelic, and they require an overt telic morpheme to be interpreted as telic.
So if Borer is arguing that atelicity is universally represented by less functional structure, what does it mean to have these inherently telic verbs, where an overt morpheme marks atelicity, and telicity is unmarked?
Now, I have yet to fully read Borer (and have the suspicion that her theory actually may be able to account for this [2]) but at first glance this seems problematic, IF I assume that overt morphological marking corresponds to more functional structure.
So yes, two questions: What do you think of having all the information represented structurally, as opposed to being listed in the lexicon, and is the assumption that overt morphological marking corresponds to more functional structure valid?
--------------------------------------------------------
[1] On a random note...why is "e-mail" a count noun, but "mail" a mass noun?
[2] My paper topic for this syntax class! It's getting somewhat ridiculous: I don't know how to get around using the following phrase "inherently atelic (i.e. possible unergative) intransitives," but really, there ought to be a limit to the number of morphological negations you can use in a single noun phrase...
So, I've got a question. A rather vague "how do you feel about this approach?" question, that's been a bit of a topic in my syntax class.
I've recently been trying to make my way through"The Normal Course of Events" by Hagit Borer. One of her main themes is that several phenomena traditionally accounted for through lexical specification should actually be accounted for through structural/syntactic means.
For instance, Borer argues that the difference between mass nouns and count nouns, which is traditionally accounted for by stating that each noun in the lexicon is specified as either mass or count[1], is actually structurally represented, so that count nouns have more functional structure than mass nouns.
This is extended to the verbal domain as well. So the difference between unergative and unaccusative verbs, argues Borer, is not a lexical difference, such that "run" is specified as an "unergative" verb, while "arrive" is specified as an "unaccusative" verb, but is actually a structural difference such that unergative verbs have more functional structure than unaccusatives.
And again, the difference between telic and atelic verbs is that telic verbs have more functional structure than atelic verbs.
So what do you think about this approach that consists of taking all of the information out of the lexicon and instead representing it structurally? Like it or don't like it? Good move or bad move? Why or why not?
As for me, going with my gut feeling, I kind of like the idea that everything is structurally represented (so that even a notion like "verb" and "noun" is derived in the syntax). But then I wonder: what does such an approach mean for languages like Yucatec Mayan?
In Yucatec Mayan, there are (at least) two types of intransitive verbs: inherently telic, and inherently atelic intransitives. The inherently telic verbs, when unmarked, are interpreted as (hence the name) telic. They need to be overtly marked by an atelic morpheme to be interpreted as atelic. The inherently atelic verbs, on the other hand, when unmarked, are interpreted as atelic, and they require an overt telic morpheme to be interpreted as telic.
So if Borer is arguing that atelicity is universally represented by less functional structure, what does it mean to have these inherently telic verbs, where an overt morpheme marks atelicity, and telicity is unmarked?
Now, I have yet to fully read Borer (and have the suspicion that her theory actually may be able to account for this [2]) but at first glance this seems problematic, IF I assume that overt morphological marking corresponds to more functional structure.
So yes, two questions: What do you think of having all the information represented structurally, as opposed to being listed in the lexicon, and is the assumption that overt morphological marking corresponds to more functional structure valid?
--------------------------------------------------------
[1] On a random note...why is "e-mail" a count noun, but "mail" a mass noun?
[2] My paper topic for this syntax class! It's getting somewhat ridiculous: I don't know how to get around using the following phrase "inherently atelic (i.e. possible unergative) intransitives," but really, there ought to be a limit to the number of morphological negations you can use in a single noun phrase...
Friday, October 5, 2007
The Ig Nobel Prize in Linguistics
"A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7026150.stm
Presumably this means they could tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese spoken forward...
We've got to get going on this blog again!
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7026150.stm
Presumably this means they could tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese spoken forward...
We've got to get going on this blog again!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Another thing...
So I tried out my analysis below on some members of my reading group last night, while waiting for everyone to arrive, and everyone thought I was jumping the gun with the "quantifying over deictic spheres" instead of "worlds." Which is fine, because what I was really trying to get at, I think, is the idea that BF may lack an existential quantifier. Which would then explain why whenever we try to elicit things like "a man," "some men," "a few men," we get elaborate round-about ways of conveying these. (The few quantifiers over sets that we've found so far all seem to be interpretable as universals, like 'all' (duh) and 'both'...)
So now what I'm asking: Does anyone know someplace else where someone might expect an existential quantifier, in a language like English?
And just because I like to complain, UBC says that this article on (supposed) existential polarity items in Chinese is (supposedly) available full-text online, but the referred site keeps asking me for $32.00! Now I might have to do something ridiculous, like actually, physically, go into the library and find the journal...
So now what I'm asking: Does anyone know someplace else where someone might expect an existential quantifier, in a language like English?
And just because I like to complain, UBC says that this article on (supposed) existential polarity items in Chinese is (supposedly) available full-text online, but the referred site keeps asking me for $32.00! Now I might have to do something ridiculous, like actually, physically, go into the library and find the journal...
Monday, June 11, 2007
Trying to piece together an analysis
Do you know how you can see bits of a picture, and then your mind will fill in the empty places, so that you think you're seeing a complete picture? Or you can see the first and last letter of a word, where the middle letters are all mixed up, and your brain will unmix-it-up for you? I've been hoping that my brain would manage to fill-in and unmix-up a half-baked analysis that's been mouldering in my mind for something like 8 months. Unfortunately, my brain hasn't quite managed to do it yet. So I'm asking for help! Or assurance that I'm not crazy.
Now, this research is what I've been focusing on for the past two years, and it's very dear to me, but I've been reluctant to post on this stuff before. This is because the relevant data really belongs to my language consultant, not me, and I don't think it's right to just splash it all over the internet. But I think I've managed to write it in a way that avoids this problem since I don't actually provide any data.
So here is my full-of-holes-and-faulty-logic working analysis:
Assumption 1: In IE languages like English, semantic truth-values are encoded through Tense, or IP, in the clausal (verbal) domain. (Kearns 2000)
Messy Assumption 2: The semantic equivalent of truth-values in the nominal domain is existence, or referentiality. (Because I am, er, semantically-challenged, I'm not sure what the difference between existence and referentiality is. )
Now, here is a hole. Is this assumption justifiable? I figure that nominal elements don't really have truth-values, but something more like an existential, or referential value. Or looking at it the other way, a noun has (or doesn't have) a referential value, and the clausal/verbal is considered 'true' if event being referred to exists, and is 'false' if the event doesn't exist. Does that make sense? Man, I really wish there were more undergraduate classes in semantics. But anyways, assuming that the above, er, assumption [i], is justified, I'll move on with the holey analysis...
Now, here's where my (poor excuse of an) analysis get's really vague and holey. I have a load of questions. If Blackfoot doesn't have the syntactic node Tense, how are semantic truth-values encoded? Or are they even encoded? Because there's this idea that several languages do not ASSERT information, but instead PRESENT information (or so I gathered from my LING 447 evidentials seminar...but have yet to find a citable reference) Does the Participant node encode truth-values, or some other semantic, perhaps speech act participant-related, property being encoded?
BUT anyways, if I jump over that giant hole in my analysis, and assume that there is some kind of Participant-related-semantic feature encoded by Participant node in the clausal/verbal domain, the simplest stab at what the nominal equivalent would just be Participant. Right? Because while it doesn't really make sense for nouns to have a +/- truth-value, they can certainly have a +/- SpeechActParticipant value.
Now putting this all together, one might predict that Blackfoot NPIs wouldn't have an existential property within the scope of negation, but instead have a parallel SpeechActParticipant property within the scope of negation. (Which, of course, I already know is the case, and I'm just pretending is a prediction for presentation's sake...)
So, despite the giant holes, does this analysis make sense? Is it interesting? I hope it's interesting...
And a question from this: How might such a semantic 'SpeechActParticipant' property manifest in other parts of the language? What kind of predictions does this analysis make? How cool would it be if this language didn't quantify over worlds, but instead over deictic spheres? Or something like that...
----------------------------------------
[i] I know Giannakidou's 1998 notion of semantic (non)veridicality (which is directly related to truth-values) translates (non)veridicality onto the nominal domain (with determiners and quantifiers) in terms of whether the denotation of the NP is nonempty or not...which kind of feels like the same sort of thing I'm trying to say. Except, of course, the semantic terminology is a giant barrier in my understanding. See now, I really could benefit from a 'Semantics Awareness Week'...
(Hey, they have those wristbands for just about anything. Why not this?)
Now, this research is what I've been focusing on for the past two years, and it's very dear to me, but I've been reluctant to post on this stuff before. This is because the relevant data really belongs to my language consultant, not me, and I don't think it's right to just splash it all over the internet. But I think I've managed to write it in a way that avoids this problem since I don't actually provide any data.
So here is my full-of-holes-and-faulty-logic working analysis:
Assumption 1: In IE languages like English, semantic truth-values are encoded through Tense, or IP, in the clausal (verbal) domain. (Kearns 2000)
Messy Assumption 2: The semantic equivalent of truth-values in the nominal domain is existence, or referentiality. (Because I am, er, semantically-challenged, I'm not sure what the difference between existence and referentiality is. )
Now, here is a hole. Is this assumption justifiable? I figure that nominal elements don't really have truth-values, but something more like an existential, or referential value. Or looking at it the other way, a noun has (or doesn't have) a referential value, and the clausal/verbal is considered 'true' if event being referred to exists, and is 'false' if the event doesn't exist. Does that make sense? Man, I really wish there were more undergraduate classes in semantics. But anyways, assuming that the above, er, assumption [i], is justified, I'll move on with the holey analysis...
Generalization 1: NPIs are known for having existential narrow-scope - they are non-referential (Progovac 1994, Uribe-Etxebarria 1996)
Assumption 3: Blackfoot lacks the syntactic node Tense, utterances instead being anchored deictically via a Participant (as in Speech Act Participant) node (Ritter & Wiltschko 2005).Now, here's where my (poor excuse of an) analysis get's really vague and holey. I have a load of questions. If Blackfoot doesn't have the syntactic node Tense, how are semantic truth-values encoded? Or are they even encoded? Because there's this idea that several languages do not ASSERT information, but instead PRESENT information (or so I gathered from my LING 447 evidentials seminar...but have yet to find a citable reference) Does the Participant node encode truth-values, or some other semantic, perhaps speech act participant-related, property being encoded?
BUT anyways, if I jump over that giant hole in my analysis, and assume that there is some kind of Participant-related-semantic feature encoded by Participant node in the clausal/verbal domain, the simplest stab at what the nominal equivalent would just be Participant. Right? Because while it doesn't really make sense for nouns to have a +/- truth-value, they can certainly have a +/- SpeechActParticipant value.
Now putting this all together, one might predict that Blackfoot NPIs wouldn't have an existential property within the scope of negation, but instead have a parallel SpeechActParticipant property within the scope of negation. (Which, of course, I already know is the case, and I'm just pretending is a prediction for presentation's sake...)
So, despite the giant holes, does this analysis make sense? Is it interesting? I hope it's interesting...
And a question from this: How might such a semantic 'SpeechActParticipant' property manifest in other parts of the language? What kind of predictions does this analysis make? How cool would it be if this language didn't quantify over worlds, but instead over deictic spheres? Or something like that...
----------------------------------------
[i] I know Giannakidou's 1998 notion of semantic (non)veridicality (which is directly related to truth-values) translates (non)veridicality onto the nominal domain (with determiners and quantifiers) in terms of whether the denotation of the NP is nonempty or not...which kind of feels like the same sort of thing I'm trying to say. Except, of course, the semantic terminology is a giant barrier in my understanding. See now, I really could benefit from a 'Semantics Awareness Week'...
(Hey, they have those wristbands for just about anything. Why not this?)
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Linguistic Ecumenism
Hi. I've been MIA for a bit, and haven't posted yet, so I thought I'd better say hi, and thanks for inviting me to be part of the team and stuff.
Today I'm going to talk about linguistic ecumenism.
In my two years at the fringes of the linguistics academic community, one thing I notice over and over again is that different fields of linguistics don't talk to each other. I believe the reasons for this include the following:
1. Time. Who has time to read a lot of research in her own field, much less the less-relevant fields?
2. Disdain. It is easy to get dogmatic about something you know a fair bit, but not a huge amount, about. My first exposure to linguistics was Chomskian*, and the arguments for it are quite conviincing. The arguments against it are not given. There are plenty of structural linguists, who, with good reason, think sociolinguistics is premature: how can we study language variation when we don't even know what language is? And there are plenty of sociolinguists who, also with good reason, think structural linguistics is oversimplifying to the point of failing to capture anything about language. Etc.
3. Ignorance. Linguists who know nothing of a given subfield of their discipline are likely to fail to see the value of it, or even fail to notice its existence.
Another thing I've noticed is that there are many students, especially at the undergrad level, who are still interested in subfields of linguistics that are not their specialty. I've spoken to many young linguists on this very topic, and while some are somewhat agreeable for the sake of being friendly or polite, and throw in half-joking comments like "well, sure, except for [insert derided subfield/theory here]", many are in full agreement. Enough that I say we start an explicit movement.
THE ECUMENICAL LINGUISTICS MANIFESTO
A spectre is haunting linguistics -- the spectre of Ecumenism. All the powers of old linguistics have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: prof and chair, Chomsky and Labov, MIT dogmatics and UCLA postmodernists.
Where is the theory in opposition that has not been decried as foolish by its opponents at MIT?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Ecumenism is already acknowledged by all traditional academic powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Ecumenical Linguists should openly, in the face of the whole linguistic world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of ecumenism with a manifesto of the movement itself.
To this end, imaginary Ecumenical Linguists of various institutions have assembled in my head and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in English, IPA and possibly French if we feel like it.
We have laboured under the pretense that separate subfields of linguistcs are in conflict with one another. No more! We must recognise that linguistics is a science, and therefore (1) is virtually always wrong, and (2) must by definition be constantly open to refutation, alternative theories and new data. A good scientist is excited by problematic data and opposing viewpoints. A good scientist struggles against her ego in the service of the search for knowledge. Brothers and sisters, the ego must not win!
We, the new generation of linguists, must rise up against this dogmatic separation! We must fight for the time to keep up on research from outside our tiny specialties! We must fight down the egoistic need to be right, and embrace opposition, debate, and cooperation!
ECUMENICAL LINGUISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
* A math prof once told me that the greatest compliment a mathematician can get is for his name to be used as an ordinary noun: uncapitalised and subject to morphology. Chomsky's halfway there.
Today I'm going to talk about linguistic ecumenism.
In my two years at the fringes of the linguistics academic community, one thing I notice over and over again is that different fields of linguistics don't talk to each other. I believe the reasons for this include the following:
1. Time. Who has time to read a lot of research in her own field, much less the less-relevant fields?
2. Disdain. It is easy to get dogmatic about something you know a fair bit, but not a huge amount, about. My first exposure to linguistics was Chomskian*, and the arguments for it are quite conviincing. The arguments against it are not given. There are plenty of structural linguists, who, with good reason, think sociolinguistics is premature: how can we study language variation when we don't even know what language is? And there are plenty of sociolinguists who, also with good reason, think structural linguistics is oversimplifying to the point of failing to capture anything about language. Etc.
3. Ignorance. Linguists who know nothing of a given subfield of their discipline are likely to fail to see the value of it, or even fail to notice its existence.
Another thing I've noticed is that there are many students, especially at the undergrad level, who are still interested in subfields of linguistics that are not their specialty. I've spoken to many young linguists on this very topic, and while some are somewhat agreeable for the sake of being friendly or polite, and throw in half-joking comments like "well, sure, except for [insert derided subfield/theory here]", many are in full agreement. Enough that I say we start an explicit movement.
THE ECUMENICAL LINGUISTICS MANIFESTO
A spectre is haunting linguistics -- the spectre of Ecumenism. All the powers of old linguistics have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: prof and chair, Chomsky and Labov, MIT dogmatics and UCLA postmodernists.
Where is the theory in opposition that has not been decried as foolish by its opponents at MIT?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Ecumenism is already acknowledged by all traditional academic powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Ecumenical Linguists should openly, in the face of the whole linguistic world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of ecumenism with a manifesto of the movement itself.
To this end, imaginary Ecumenical Linguists of various institutions have assembled in my head and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in English, IPA and possibly French if we feel like it.
We have laboured under the pretense that separate subfields of linguistcs are in conflict with one another. No more! We must recognise that linguistics is a science, and therefore (1) is virtually always wrong, and (2) must by definition be constantly open to refutation, alternative theories and new data. A good scientist is excited by problematic data and opposing viewpoints. A good scientist struggles against her ego in the service of the search for knowledge. Brothers and sisters, the ego must not win!
We, the new generation of linguists, must rise up against this dogmatic separation! We must fight for the time to keep up on research from outside our tiny specialties! We must fight down the egoistic need to be right, and embrace opposition, debate, and cooperation!
ECUMENICAL LINGUISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
* A math prof once told me that the greatest compliment a mathematician can get is for his name to be used as an ordinary noun: uncapitalised and subject to morphology. Chomsky's halfway there.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
On Things That Are Awesomer than Cat Macros:
I'm not posting much because I'm a greengrocer for the summer, but I had to share this:
(Via Phonoloblog.)
The best thing ever? Perhaps.
(Via Phonoloblog.)
The best thing ever? Perhaps.
I beat up Michael, but *I beat up him
A data set I came up with during yesterday's car trip:
(1)
a. I beat him/them/you up (twice a week).
b. *I beat up him/them/you (twice a week).
c. We beat each other up (twice a week).
d * We beat up each other (twice a week).
e. We beat ourselves up (twice a week).
f. *We beat up ourselves (twice a week).
g. Jon and Michael beat each other up (twice a week.)
h. *Jon and Michael beat up each other (twice a week).
(2)
a. I beat Michael up (twice a week).
b. I beat up Michael (twice a week).
(3)
a. I beat the/a boy up (twice a week).
b. I beat up the/a boy (twice a week).
(4)
a. I beat all the boys up (twice a week).
b. I beat up all the boys (twice a week).
c. I beat all boys up.
d. I beat up all boys.
e. I beat boys up (twice a week).
f. I beat up boys (twice a week).
(5)
a. I beat each boy up (twice a week)
b. I beat up each boy (twice a week)
(6)
a. I beat his brother up (twice a week).
b. I beat up his brother. (twice a week).
(7)
a. I beat someone up (twice a week).
b. ?I beat up someone (twice a week).
(8)
a. ??I beat no one up.
b. ??I beat up no one.
c. I didn't beat up anyone.
d. I didn't beat anyone up.
So what's the generalization? At first I thought that the elements that cannot appear outside of 'beat up' were the elements that require some kind of antecedent, or discourse context, in order to be meaningful, but doesn't the data in (6) also require a previously established reference for 'his'? But then again, maybe that doesn't matter because 'his' is not an argument of the verb...
Someone has probably already figured this out. Perhaps I will google it...
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Lovely diagram...
I, er, just wanted to share the beautiful diagram I made[1], which I will include in the PPT presentation for my honours thesis defence tomorrow.------------------
[1] Meaghan Fowlie gave me the idea that there was a hierarchy involved with these semantic properties, hence the sweet vertical formatting.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Prescriptivist Tenses...
~
I use this 'Stumble' extension for Firefox, which randomly sends you to webpages that others have tagged as interesting. Today it sent me to this page. Let me warn you - it's a prescriptivist rant. [insert your own spiel about how prescriptivism is wrong]. What I found fascinating is the fact that people rant about these things without researching them first. If I were to rant about something, I would research it first, you know, to cover my bases. So here's an excerpt:
#27: UNEXPLAINED CONDITIONALS: I'm baffled by the now almost universal use in the U.S. of the conditional tense where no condition appears to exist to justify it. For example, it is now apparently standard practice to thank people conditionally, as in "I would like to thank Joe Smith for all his help." The use of "would" suggests an unspoken condition, as in "I would like to thank Joe Smith for all his help but I'm not going to" and prompts the response, "What's stopping you?" "I want to thank ....." is no better. Just say "Thank you, Joe Smith, for all your help" and slip him the plain envelope with the cash. November 23, 2005.
Now, I know that people usually talk about a 'conditional mood' as opposed to a 'conditional tense', and I know that I hear the counterfactual conditional being used to convey politeness all of the time. But what I don't know (shamefully), is what 'mood' is. I know Tense, according to Reichenbach, is the relationship between the utterance time UT and the reference time RT. But in order to provide a definition for mood I'll need to do some googling...
(cue wavy lines and 'passing of time' music)
Definition 1:
Source: http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/
Definition 2:
"Mood is one of a set of distinctive forms that are used to signal modality" where "modality is a facet of illocutionary force, signaled by grammatical devices (that is, moods), that expresses" either "the illocutionary point or general intent of a speaker, or a speaker’s degree of commitment to the expressed proposition's believability, obligatoriness, desirability, or reality. "
Source: SIL
Definition 3:
If anyone wants to tell me what mood actually is, I'd be grateful!
I use this 'Stumble' extension for Firefox, which randomly sends you to webpages that others have tagged as interesting. Today it sent me to this page. Let me warn you - it's a prescriptivist rant. [insert your own spiel about how prescriptivism is wrong]. What I found fascinating is the fact that people rant about these things without researching them first. If I were to rant about something, I would research it first, you know, to cover my bases. So here's an excerpt:
#27: UNEXPLAINED CONDITIONALS: I'm baffled by the now almost universal use in the U.S. of the conditional tense where no condition appears to exist to justify it. For example, it is now apparently standard practice to thank people conditionally, as in "I would like to thank Joe Smith for all his help." The use of "would" suggests an unspoken condition, as in "I would like to thank Joe Smith for all his help but I'm not going to" and prompts the response, "What's stopping you?" "I want to thank ....." is no better. Just say "Thank you, Joe Smith, for all your help" and slip him the plain envelope with the cash. November 23, 2005.
Now, I know that people usually talk about a 'conditional mood' as opposed to a 'conditional tense', and I know that I hear the counterfactual conditional being used to convey politeness all of the time. But what I don't know (shamefully), is what 'mood' is. I know Tense, according to Reichenbach, is the relationship between the utterance time UT and the reference time RT. But in order to provide a definition for mood I'll need to do some googling...
(cue wavy lines and 'passing of time' music)
Definition 1:
"Mood
SYNTAX: cover term for one of the four inflectional categories of verbs (mood, tense, aspect, and modality). The most common categories are associated with the way sentences are used: indicative (statement), imperative (command), optative (wish), etc. Sometimes the distinction between declaratives (I go) and interrogatives (Do I go?) is considered one of mood. "
Source: http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/
Definition 2:
"Mood is one of a set of distinctive forms that are used to signal modality" where "modality is a facet of illocutionary force, signaled by grammatical devices (that is, moods), that expresses" either "the illocutionary point or general intent of a speaker, or a speaker’s degree of commitment to the expressed proposition's believability, obligatoriness, desirability, or reality. "
Source: SIL
Definition 3:
"unlike modals, mood markers do not have quantificational force of their own; their main function is to add a presupposition about the type of conversational background that is involved in the modal interpretation of the sentence."
Source: Matthewson et. al 2005:12, on Portner 1997
So, er, while I still don't know exactly what 'mood' is, I think the common theme in the above definitions are that mood is what results when something is morphologically or syntactically used to encode elements of the F-domain, where F consists of the illocutionary force and illocutionary context. (where Speech Act = illocutionary force + illocutionary context + propositional content). Obviously that needs to be ironed out a bit, because I think the vagueness of that definition allows the encoding of information structure like Topic and Focus to also be considered as moods markers..which I'm not sure is what I want.If anyone wants to tell me what mood actually is, I'd be grateful!
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Post-nominal 'of'-phrases
~
A question for L1 English speakers: Do you agree with the judgments given below?
(113)*The imposition of the government of a fine
(114) The government's imposition of a fine
These are stolen from David Adger's 'Core Syntax', by the way. The generalization is that Agents cannot be realized as post-nominal 'of'-phrases, but for me, in my[1] brand of English, (113) is grammatically well-formed. It's just stylistically disgusting. Is this just me, or do other people get this too?
[1] evidently nonstandard
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