Linguistics Papers

The paper gives an introduction to phonetics, phonology, and morphology.

The course aims to provide:

• A working knowledge of the following core areas of description in linguistics: phonetics, phonology, and morphology
• Familiarity with the range of variation found between languages in these areas
• An awareness of the overlap between these areas, and the difficulties of separating them in actual analysis

A fundamental property of language - one which gives it its enormous power and flexibility - is its 'compositionality', the building of larger elements (such as sentences) out of smaller (words).

The paper begins with an introduction to formal approaches to language. For Structures the lectures will visit topics such as categories and constituents, phrase-structure rules and constituency tests, X'-theory, Wh-movement, pronouns, binding and c-command, syntax beyond English and the architecture of the grammar.

For Meanings lectures will discuss lexical meaning, theta-roles, sentence meaning and truth, Quantification, utterance meaning and speaker’s intentions and politeness.

While linguistics often treats language as a phenomenon in its own right, taking its evidence from what people say and what they regard as grammatical, language is clearly also a cognitive phenomenon (involving the mind and brain). And while language processing is a typically human skill and experience, technology is now sufficiently far advanced that machines can also process language in sophisticated ways (and often more rapidly). Computational tools also now allow us to better understand how language works and how it may be acquired.

Much of our knowledge about language and the mind is indirect. Although recently it has become possible, through brain-scanning techniques, to see neural responses to different linguistic stimuli, our knowledge from this kind of source is still in its infancy. However, much can be inferred about how the mind organises language from more accessible sources such as language acquisition, speech errors, language impairment, and behavioural experiments. The acquisition of language by babies and children gives a window on how we seek general patterns (children will over-generalise for a while and try forms like goed once they've realised that -ed signals the past tense); and arguably acquisition gives evidence for humans being born with an innate preparedness for language. Errors in producing language turn out not to be random: the fact that tip of the slongue is a much more likely error for slip of the tongue than tlip of the songue shows that phonotactic constraints are psychologically real (English doesn't allow tl initially in a syllable). And the loss of specific aspects of language after brain damage (e.g. strokes), such as word-finding, or sentence-formation, suggests a degree of modularity in the mind corresponding (in these cases) to the lexicon or to syntax. Modelling language on the basis of behavioural (and neural) information, and testing models through more advanced computational means thus go hand in hand. This paper will provide introductions in these related fields.

This paper focuses on contemporary variation and historical change in English. It uses English, a language known by all those taking the paper, as an introduction to the linguistic analysis of variation and change.

The aim of the Linguistic theory paper is specifically to integrate the knowledge which Linguistics Tripos finalists acquire in their individual specialist linguistics papers and their general reading and thinking about language. It will thus be a true 'general' paper, whose purpose is to stimulate thinking about language and linguistic theory at a high level. All topics will therefore aim to do one or more of the following: to cross sub-disciplinary boundaries and/or to question them, to place the description of specific phenomena in the context of general linguistic theory, to raise questions of methodology common to more than one linguistic subdiscipline, to address the notion of linguistic theory, and to relate linguistics to its broader scientific and intellectual context.

The overall aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the way languages use sound. The course not only covers topics in the description and modelling of speech, its production and perception, and the immense variety among the sound systems of languages, but it also includes the acquisition of ‘hands on’ skills of analysis both by ear and by computer.

This paper provides an introduction to classic and current research on the word-internal structure of human languages. It builds on the introductory lectures in Li1 (Sounds and Words), but can also function as a stand-alone survey of phonology and morphology for students with suitable linguistics backgrounds who are borrowing the paper into approved Triposes such as MMLL and AMES.

In this paper on syntactic theory, the 'Principles and Parameters' model, which is by far the most highly developed and most widely adopted, is studied to a relatively advanced level. This limitation to one model makes it possible to consider in some depth not only the technical details of this theory, but also its goals, and the nature of syntactic argumentation. The importance of description in supporting and testing theory is emphasised, and students are encouraged to evaluate theoretical claims in the light of observations of a wide range of languages. This discussion of the findings of syntactic typology together with those of syntactic theory is in line with a growing trend in research. The languages used for illustration are chosen as far as is practical from the range known to students taking the paper, but students are also urged to examine for themselves languages with which they have some familiarity.

The lectures associated with this paper introduce some of the contemporary approaches to meaning and linguistic communication. The course begins with an introduction to word meaning, including an analysis of the relations between words in a language system, words and concepts, and words and objects in the world. This includes an introduction to approaches to reference, sense, mental images and prototypes.

One of the few things we can predict with confidence in the field of linguistics is that languages change, although not necessarily how or why such change occurs. Although linguistics has since the early 20th century been a predominantly synchronic discipline, studying the structure of a language or languages at a specific point in time, this course reflects the view that linguistic systems cannot be completely understood from a purely synchronic perspective: instead, we should also concern ourselves with the ways in which such systems have arisen.

English has changed enormously over the past 1500 years of its historical development: while Shakespearian English is comprehensible, albeit with some difficulties, to a casual reader, the gulf between today's English and the Middle English of Chaucer is considerable, and Old English is accessible only after careful study of the language. This paper examines the processes by which today's English, including nonstandard varieties of English, has emerged. It is concerned with how we establish historical change in the structure of the language by careful examination of textual and dialectal evidence and with how those structures and changes have been analysed and explained by different linguists. We ask what factors caused particular innovations to arise at particular times: for instance, why do we no longer have sentences where the verb follows the object? We look at the relationship between the language and the societies in which it was used: why were some forms chosen to be part of a prestige standard or why has differentiation arisen in the English of different parts of the English-speaking world.

In this course we will explore issues in both first and second language acquisition. The general question we are asking is what we know when we know a language and how we get there. Language acquisition has been studied from many different perspectives and the different perspectives lead to different areas of acquisition being researched more or less in depth. This course will provide an overview of issues studied in the various approaches, thereby giving a comprehensive introduction to the domain of language acquisition.

Aims

• provide an overview of psychological research that is relevant to language processing and learning
• illustrate the range of methodologies used in experimental research
• cover the most interesting and relevant psychological phenomena that have been revealed through (primarily) experimental research
• introduce the currently most influential approaches to modelling these phenomena
• highlight major theoretical issues in the relevant areas of research
• consider how fundamental principles of learning and memory might be applicable to first and second language learning

The aim of the paper is to gain knowledge and understanding of the nature of structural variation across human language and its connection to human cognition. We will learn about language description and classification, systematic patterns of structure observed across languages, typological generalisations and language universals. We will also look at how different types of languages and structures are acquired and processed by their speakers and become familiar with empirical studies of acquisition and processing for a variety of languages with an emphasis on studies from non European languages. We will consider different theoretical views and explanations for typological generalisations and what might constrain the human capacity for language (functionalist, formal/Faculty of Language, domain general cognition). Students will be encouraged to develop a critical perspective and synthesize conceptual arguments and empirical evidence from linguistic and cognitive perspectives. We will further consider how language typology might be constrained by acquisition and processing and how it might influence aspects of acquisition and processing. For example, how, in situations of multilingualism, the typological similarity between the languages involved can explain patterns of acquisition and processing; conversely, how acquisition and processing constraints might explain emerging features in languages in contact. Similarly, how the timing or order of acquisition of specific phenomena might vary across languages in first language acquisition contrasting with universal aspects of linguistic development. These empirical questions will be related to more foundational questions: what is a possible human language, what enables and what limits linguistic diversity.

This paper provides an introduction to computational linguistics, covering the fundamental techniques which can be used to model linguistic phenomena computationally at the levels of morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Students are taught how such techniques are implemented, evaluated and applied to natural language processing (NLP) tasks. An overview of the use of such techniques is provided, along with an introduction to several applications (e.g. machine translation, sentiment analysis and dialogue systems). At the end of the course, students will understand basic computational linguistics techniques as well as their limitations and current performance levels when applied to linguistic research and to real-world tasks.

A dissertation is an extended essay normally divided into chapters or sections, with appropriate scholarly apparatus - precise referencing of sources, bibliography, possibly footnotes - which sets out to solve a problem, to query an existing belief, or to provide an accurate description and explanation of some phenomenon.