Azu’s Notes

All languages have rules. These rules together form the grammarof that language. These rules are what enables a person to produce an infinite number of phrases/sentences from a finite number of possibilities, that is understood by both the speaker and the listener. It would be rather difficult to learn any language if each sentence had to be learnt separately!

Syntax is the areas of linguistics that attempts to describe what is grammatical in a particular language in term of rules. It is the study of sentence structure. Syntactic rules detail an underlying structure and a transformational process.

The underlying structure of English for example would have a subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence order

e.g.

Usman hit the ball.

The transformational process would allow an alteration of the word order which could give you something like:

The ball was hit by Usman.

All languages have ways of referring to entities -  people, places, things, ideas, events. These expression used to refer to entities are known as referring expressions. All languages can also make predictions about what is signaled by the referring expressions (i.e. they have ways of making statements, asking questions, issuing directions …) These are generally called the predicate of the sentence.

In syntactic terms a referring expression is called a Noun Phrases - NP; and the predicate is called a Verb Phrases - VP. All languages have NPs and VPs

In syntax all other phrases (that occur within the NPs & VPs) are also termed with reference to the head component:

e.g.

Adjective Phrase (AP)

Adverb Phrase (AdvP)

Preposition Phrase (PP)

There are three main kinds of sentences:

Simple sentences

Conjoined sentences (also known compound sentences)

Complex sentences

Simple sentences contain only one idea

E.g.

Adnan fell.

Simple sentences comprise only one idea, clause and verb group. We say verb group (instead of verb) because a verb group itself can consist of one word (fell, assembled, cooked, won) or more than one word (will buy, had put, should have believed).

 

Conjoined sentences have two (or more) clauses joined together using coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or …)

E.g.

Adnan fell and twisted his ankle.

 

Complex sentences have embedded clauses. i.e. one clause is incorporated into another one

E.g. The clause

Adnan fell

can be incorporated into another clause to produce the sentence -

Zahir said Adnan fell

Unlike in conjoined sentences, complex sentences contain clauses of unequal status. i.e. one clause is subordinated into another and functions as a grammatical part of it. The subordinate clause is called an embedded clause and the clause in which it is embedded is called a matrix clause.

Every subordinate clause is embedded in a matrix clause and serves a grammatical function in it.

Lexical semantics is the subfield of linguistics that studies how and what words of a language denote and thus involves the meaning of individual words.

Lexical semantics focuses on theories of:

classification and decomposition of word meaning

differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure between different languages

the relationship of word meaning to sentence meaning and syntax

The study of lexical semantics includes the study of:

lexical fields

lexical relations

Lexical fields are sets of words that share semantic affinity

E.g.

Lexical field of colour includes words such as

black, orange, red, green …

There are two types of lexical fields:

Syntagmatic

words share a particular syntactic relationship to one another

Paradigmatic

words organized into a head term and other subordinate terms in a hierarchical organization pattern

A lexical relation is a pattern of association that exists between lexical units in a particular language.

Lexical relations we will be looking at are:

synonymy

meronomy

hyponymy & hypernymy

homonymy

polysemy

antonymy

Synonyms are words that have identical or similar meanings that can be used interchangeably in most cases; although no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language)

E.g.

smooth, silky

give, deliver, provide

house, home, hut, dwelling, abode

Synonyms can be nouns, adverbs or adjectives as long as they belong to the same part of speech

Meronomies describe part-whole relations. A meronym denotes a constituent part of, or a member of something

E.g.

finger is a meronym of hand

Hyponym is a word whose semantic range is included within that of another word

E.g.

car, van, train, dhoni, ship, aircraft are all hyponyms of vehicles.

Hypernym is a word whose meaning encompasses the meaning of (an)other word(s)

E.g.

Vehicle is the hypernym for each of the following:

car, van, train, dhoni, ship, aircraft

Homonym is a word whose senses are not obviously related (other than through coincidence or accident)

E.g.

I, eye and aye

Homonyms can be divided into further sub-categories:

homographs

same spelling (bark of tree; bark of dog)

homophones

same pronunciation (there, their, they’re)

Heteronyms

same spelling, different meaning & pronunciation (desert (abandon) and desert (arid region))

capitonymy

different meanings when capitalized (polish, Polish)

heterologues

from different languages; have same spelling but different meaning (’Hell’ in English & ’Hell’ in German which means bright)

A polyseme is a single word with two distinct but very closely related senses.The distinction between polysemy and homonymy is often very subtle and subjective. Some sources state that homonym meanings must be unrelated (rather than just different), or that the words must have a different origin. Whereas polysemes have related meanings often with the same origin

E.g.

fork (in road / instrument to eat)

Antonyms are word pairs that are opposite in meaning and can be divided into four main types:

gradable antonyms

extremes of a scale (hot >< cold)

complementary antonyms

mutually exclusive (married >< single)

converse/relational antonyms

a sort of binary opposition (parent >< child)

Validity is the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure.

Testing is a matter of making judgments about test-takers competence in view of their performance on certain tasks.

These judgments are inferences as tests do not collect concrete evidence about test-takers’ ability, in the natural state, but only abstract inferences

Evidence of test performance is used to draw conclusions about candidates’ ability to handle the demands of the criterion situation.

For high-stakes tests procedures need to be taken to investigate the procedure by which the conclusions were drawn.

Test validation is this process of investigating the quality of the test-based conclusions

The different types of validity are:

Content validity

     Face validity

     Content (sampling) validity

Criterion-related validity

-[        Concurrent Validity

<!        Predictive Validity

Construct validity

Face validity is the extent to which a test meets the expectations of those involved in its use -  stake-holders

This type of validation is designed to decrease opposition by ensuring that nobody is too unhappy with it.

An example of an instrument that measures face validity is Rosenberg’s self esteem scale.

When a test has content (sampling) validity, the items on the test represent the entire range of possible items the test should cover.

To ensure this, individual test questions may be drawn from a large pool of items that cover a broad range of topics.

Content validity establishes that the measure covers the full range of the concept’s meaning, i.e. covers all dimensions of a concept

When a test has content validity, the test reflects the syllabus on which it is based

A test is said to have criterion-related validity when the test is demonstrated to be effective in predicting criterion or indicators of a construct.

There are two different types of criterion-related validity:

<!   concurrent Validity

<!   predictive validity

 

Concurrent validity occurs when the criterion measures are obtained at the same time as the test scores.

This indicates the extent to which the test scores accurately estimate an individual’s current state with regards to the criterion.

Predictive validity occurs when the criterion measures are obtained at a time after the test.

A test has construct validity if it demonstrates an association between the test scores and the prediction of a theoretical trait.

Construct under-representation and construct irrelevant variance are two major threats to validity too.

A test is said to demonstrate construct under-representation if tasks included in the test fail to measure important dimension of the construct. If this happens, results of the test are unlikely to reveal test-taker’s ability within the domain the test claims to measure.

A test is said to demonstrate construct irrelevant variance if tasks measure variables which are irrelevant to the domain the test claims to measure. This type of invalidity can take two forms:

<!     construct irrelevant easiness

<!     construct irrelevant difficulty

Word structure

In morphology, word structure is described in terms of roots and affixes

Simple words consist one morpheme - the root

fun, go, danger

Complex words consist more that one morpheme - the root + affix(es)

funny, goes, endanger

Languages have three principal ways of extending their vocabulary:

invention of entirely new words

borrowing from other languages

formation of new words from already existing words and word parts

Invention of new words

This is very rare

It is much easier for languages to either incorporate new meanings to existing words or borrow from another language than to make new words from scratch

Borrowing from other languages

Most language users have borrowed words from other languages and incorporated them into their own.

Deriving new words

Some ways in which new words are built from existing ones, in English are:

compounding

Shortening

Acronyms

blends

back formation

functional shift or conversion

semantic shift (metaphorical Extension)

Compounding

Compounding is a very common form of creating new words in English. It is the combination of two words to form one.

e.g.

waterbed

Shortening

Shortenings of various sorts are a popular means of multiplying the words of a language.

e.g.

feds  -  federal agents

Acronyms

These are words formed by joining the initial letters of an expression and pronouncing them as a word.

e.g.

FIFA

Blends

Blends are words created by combining parts of existing words.

e.g.

motel  - motor + hotel

Backformation

Words that are formed (again) from derivations of existing words to include a different meaning.

e.g.

computer

originally formed by adding -er to (existing) verb compute (calculate using a mathematical function) then, the computer was invented machine that computed (in the mathematical sense), however now compute has been back-formed carrying the meaning ‘to use a computer’

 

Functional Shift

In some languages (e.g. English) words belonging to one lexical category get converted to another lexical category without any overt markings on the words itself.

e.g.

local (noun; adjective)

Semantic Shift

This occurs when existing words take on new meaning by shrinking or extending their domain or usage.

When a word undergoes a functional shift in meaning, they do not replace the old one, but instead extend their range of application.

e.g.

Computer users today use a mouse and bookmark an Internet address.

Semantic Shift

Functional shifts create metaphors, then the metaphorical use of the words often leads to new meanings that come to seem perfectly natural and hence all but lose their metaphorical content.

There are three main types of meaning:

Referential meaning

Social Meaning

Affective Meaning

Referential Meaning

This is the object, notion, or state of being described by a word, phrase or sentence

e.g.

Safaru Kaidha

the meaning of this is the person who goes by that particular name.

Hadigilla’s trousers

This refers to the particular piece of clothing that belongs to that particular person

i.e the meaning of the sentence is the particular piece of clothing that belongs to Hadigilla.

The piece of clothing described by the phrase Hadigilla’s trousers is the referent of the referring expression Hadigilla’s trousers.

Santhi Mariyabu is sleeping on the holhuashi.

The meaning of this sentence is that the person by the name of Santhi Mariyambu is lying down (or sitting, perhaps) on the bed-like structure made of bamboo trunks.

Therefore, the referent of the sentence is Santhi Mariyabu’s state of being on the particular structure mentioned.

 

Social Meaning

This is the information about the identity of the speaker that is conveyed by an utterance.

e.g.

Then I says to him he can’t do nothin’ right.

The use of the verb ‘says’ with the first-person singular pronoun reveals something about the social class of the speaker

Is it a doctor in here?

The form ‘it’ where most other varieties of English would use ‘there’ indicates a speaker of an ethnically marked variety (African American Vernacular English)

Y’all gonna visit over the holiday?

The pronoun ‘y’all’ and the verb ‘gonna’ indicates a particular regional dialect of American English (Southern)

Great chow!

The choice of words here indicates that the comment was made in an informal context.

Social class, ethnicity, regional origin and context are all types of social meaning.

In addition to referential meaning, every utterance also conveys social meaning - not only in the sentence as a whole but in word choice and pronunciation.

Affective Meaning

This is the speaker’s feeling / attitude towards the content or the ongoing context.

e.g.

Rehendhi, who always brags about her cooking skills, lectured me throughout the dinner on how to improve my cooking skills.

What does the speaker think of Rehendhi?

The utterance gives the impression that the speaker considers Rehendhi a pompous bore who thinks too much of herself.

What about this one?

Rehendhi, who is a skilled cook herself, gave me some wonderful tips on how to improve my cooking skills.

What does this speaker think of Rehendhi?

This gives the impression that the speaker believes Rehendhi to be a skilled and interesting person.

Although both sentences may be describing the same event (i.e they have similar referential meaning), on another level, the information they convey is very different

i.e. ’stance’ of the two sentences are very different.

Different use of stress and intonation also provides a striking contrast in the feelings and attitudes communicated through an utterance.

e.g.

Fulhu is very kind.

How many different feelings / attitudes about Fulhu can you convey with this simple utterance?

Denotation & Connotation

The reference meaning of a word or sentence is frequently called its denotation, in contrast to the connotation, which includes both social and affective meaning.

Sense, Denotation and Reference

Linguistic expressions have both detonation and sense.

Denotation has to do with relations between linguistic expressions and the world.

It is the set of entities to which a word or expression refers (also called its referents and extension).

However, denotation is not enough to decide the meaning of a word.

Sense is the linguistic version of meaning, and is the ‘presentation of the denotation’ - which lets one work out what the denotation is.

Sense is something possessed by a name or expression, whether or not it has a reference / denotation.

e.g.

The following expressions are intelligible, and therefore have sense, even though there is no individual object (its reference) to which the expressions correspond:

The 32nd day of February.

The Mercurian ambassador to the planet Venus.

Present King of the Maldives.

Denotation is different from reference in that:

Reference is also about the relations between expressions and the world

Reference of an expression is specific to that particular occasion of utterance

Sense, Denotation and Reference

e.g.

That man is really dumb.

The denotation of man:

{all males .. e.g. Ahmed, Thakuru, Ibrahim, Fulhu …}

The reference of man:

the specific man meant by that particular sentence, at that particular time, by that particular speaker (e.g. just Alifulhu)

Words and sentences are two units of language that carry meaning.

Content words (mainly nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs):

•  refer to concrete objects and abstract concepts

•  are marked as being characteristic of particular social, ethnic and regional dialects and of particular contexts

• convey information about the feelings and attitudes of the language user

Function words (e.g. conjunctions, determiners and auxiliaries):

• signal grammatical relationships

The meaning of a sentence is dependent on the meaning of the individual words it contains.