Introduction to Linguistics - 3

Radhika Mamidi

Lecture 3

Levels of Language Processing

• Phonology• Morphology• Syntax • Semantics• Pragmatics• Discourse Analysis

What are the kinds of knowledge needed for language processing?

Boy : Say something soft and sweet.Girl: Custard pudding.

Boy (offering sweets): Sweets for the sweet.Girl: Here, have some nuts.

Johnnie: Mom! I am going out to play.Mom: With those holes in your socks!!Johnnie: No, with the kids next door.

MemoryGeneral Knowledge

Lexicon Syntactic Rules

Semantic Rules

Discourse Rules

LexicalProcessing

INPUTSSyntactic

Processing Semantic

ProcessingDiscourseProcessing

OUTPUTS

Model of Language Processing

To derive meaning you need all kinds of rules – ‘building’, ‘blocks’Eg: The building blocks are made of plastic. The building blocks the sun.

Human language is complex

teach – taught *preach - praughthe-his-him *she-shis-shimring – rang - rung *bring – brang - brungslim chance = fat chance ?slim girl = fat girl

Consistency? Regularity?

Human language is ambiguous

Ambiguity at different language levels:

Pronounce “GHOTI” [one spelling – different sounds]I scream/ice-cream, a nameless man/an aimless man

He showed me the mouse - rodent/objectThe leopard was spotted - verb/adjective

She hit the boy with the umbrella

I am reading a book on films - [now-a-days/right now]

Mary promised Sally(i) to go to her(i) partyMary(i) persuaded Sally to go to her(i) party

Pragmatic Analysis

• Grice’s Conversational Implicatures• Speech Act Theory• Politeness principles

Think if it is easy to make the computers understand the pragmatics of language!

Grice’s theory of implicatures

• Proposed by H.P.Grice (1975) • A theory of how people use the language.• Guidelines for effective & efficient use of

language in conversation.• Four Gricean Maxims

– Quality, Quantity, Relevance and Manner– Together describe the general principle of co-operative

interaction: “...make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”

Violation of maxims Implicatures

In short...

... in order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, co-operative way, the participants should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providing sufficient information.

Counter-example 1 A: Is Ravi at home? B: He went to Hyderabad.

Counter-example 2 A: Thanks for texting that you have reached home safely. B: I am very sorry. I intended to call you, but I became so busy…

Speech Act Theory

• Speech Acts– Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary Acts– Indirect Speech Acts

Speech Acts - illustrationJohn to his cousin, Bill: “I am very thirsty.”

• Locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference– Reference of ‘I’; Sense of ‘thirsty’

• Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc. in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it– Austin calls this act as SPEECH ACT– Here, it is an act of request (for water)

• Perlocutionary act: the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterances– Bill brings John a glass of water.

Indirect Speech Acts

• A class of utterances whose syntactic forms do not match their illocutionary force.

• The implicature arises when the sincerity conditions are not met.

• Examples:1. Can you pass the salt? = ‘‘please pass the salt’’2. Will you clean your room today? = ‘‘clean your room

today’’3. It’s cold in here. = ‘‘can you shut the windows’’4. You are standing on my foot. = ‘‘please move’’

Discourse

• A paragraph• A small joke• A short story• A novel• A conversation

• It has to be cohesive.

Local Discourse Context

• Includes syntactic and semantic structures of preceding sentences.

• Useful for:– detecting antecedents of pronouns– interpreting sentences with VP ellipsis

Cohesive devices

• Co-reference relations– Anaphoric forms

• Ellipsis• Cue Phrases• Discourse relations

Co-reference relations

Co-referential forms cannot be interpreted semantically in their own right - they refer to something else for their interpretation.

Exophora: The reference is outside the text. Eg. ‘Look at that’. that =

Endophora: The reference is inside the text. Anaphoric: Look at the fish. It is blue.

Cataphoric: It is blue, the fish.

Types of Anaphoric form

(a) Repeated form: The Prime Minister met the cricketers. The Prime Minister wished them good luck.

(b) Partially repeated form: Prof Ruslan Mitkov met the students. Prof. Mitkov had something nice to say to them.

(c) Lexical Replacement: Mary’s daughter came first again. The child is good at studies.

(d) Pronominal form: Zoha said she would have to take Noor to the doctor.

(e) Substituted form: Mary has a birthday in May. Sue has one too.

(f) Ellided form: Anne is in London. So is Kate. And Linda.

Let’s resolve the pronouns:

• Ali slapped Sam. He was stunned.• Ali slapped Sam. He was scolded.• If the baby does not like the new toy, throw it away.• If the baby does not like the new toy, give it

the old one.• John and Mary went to buy mangoes. They

are very expensive.• John and Mary went to buy mangoes. They

are very stingy.

Ellipsis

• Syntactically incomplete sentences• Parts missing are retrieved from previous

major clause.• Helen saw the movie. So did Mary.• Helen bought a new car. So did Mary.

• A correspondence between the two subject forms exist.

Cue PhrasesTwo classes:(A)• identifies semantic relationships between clauses or

states• used for continuation, reason, contrast, conclusion

Jack went to the store. Sam stayed at home. (read with ‘and’, ‘because’, ‘but’, ‘so’ inserted between the

sentence)

(B)• indicates discourse structure (they indicate segment

boundaries• used to end the current topic, to end the discourse,

start digression OK/fine, Bye/thanks, By the way

Discourse relations

a. Explanationb. Elaborationc. Narrationd. Backgrounde. Resultf. Parallel

Find the correct relation between the sentences in each pair.

 (i) John teaches at PSU. PSU is a private university.

(ii) John drove to college in his car. The traffic was very bad.

(iii) John loves teaching Maths and Mary loves teaching Art.

(iv) John took an extra hour of class. The students looked bored.

(v) John looks sick. He has eaten the yellow stuff again.

(vi) John went to college. He took his class.

Father: Now, Junior, be good while I am away.Son: I will be good for a dollar.Father: At your age, I was good for nothing.

Analyse this text at all the levels of language