Linguistics

Emics are abstract units. Etics such as allophone are variant forms.

400 BC. Panini is the father of linguistics. Aṣṭādhyāyī.

• 200 BC. Mahabhashya is a commentary on Panini’s Sanskrit grammar.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81%E1%B9%87ini
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81ty%C4%81yana
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabhashya

400 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philology
130. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_Dyscolus

Economy: language is a compromise between simplicity and clarity.

• 1945. Brevity law: more frequent words are shorter. By Zipf.

1980. Reading span task: read a series of unconnected sentences aloud and remember the final word of each sentence. Mostly tests reading comprehension.

Phonetics

Phonetics and phonology

• A distinctive feature distinguishes between sounds.

• A phoneme is a unit of sound.

  • Voiced phonemes are articulated with vocal fold vibration.
  • Free variation: multiple sounds have the same meaning and correctness.
  • An allophone is one of multiple possible sounds for a phoneme.

• The underlying representation of a morpheme is the abstract form before any phonological rules have been applied. The surface representation is the phonetic representation.

  • Feeding order: application of one rule allows application of another rule.
  • Bleeding order: application of one rule prevents another rule from applying.

• A sonorant or resonant is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow. Usually voiced.

  • Vowel
  • Semivowel: j and w
  • Vocoids are vowels and semivowels
  • Approximants involve articulators approaching but not close enough to create turbulent airflow
  • Nasal consants: m and n
  • Liquid consonants: l and r

• Obstruents: stops, affricates, and fricatives

• Central or median consonant: air flows over the tongue.

• Lateral consonant: air proceeds along the sides of the tongue, while blocked in the middle. E.g. l.

• Vocal registers: vocal fry, modal (the resonant mode, most frequently used), falsetto, and whistle.

• Metathesis (“I put in a different order”) switches sounds: cavalry -> calvary. Can be nonadjacent (Latin parabola -> Spanish palabra “word”).

  • Spoonerism like bunny rabbit -> runny babbit.
  • Malapropism is the use of a similar-sounding incorrect word.
    • Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons. -Constable Dogberry, Much Ado About Nothing
    • He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious. -Yogi Berra
    • he is the very pineapple of politeness -Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals (1775)
  • Bushism
    • 2000. I think we agree, the past is over.
    • 2000. Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?
    • 2000. They misunderestimated me.
    • 2000. I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
    • 2000. We ought to make the pie higher.
    • 2002. There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, ’Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.
    • 2002. you (Saddam Hussein) disarm, or we will.
    • 2004. Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

• An anagram are two words or phrases which share the same letters: “New York Times” = “monkeys write”.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Phonetics

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_form

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

Orthography or writing

• A grapheme is the smallest unit of a writing system.
  • Allographs are design variants of a glyph.
• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Word boundaries
• Capitalization
• Hyphenation
• Emphasis

Morphology

Morphology

• Morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of linguistic expression.
  • A free morpheme can occur as a complete utterance, while a bound morpheme cannot.
  • An allomorph is a variant phonetic form.
• Lexicography
  • A root word or radical is the primary lexical unit of a word. Free or bound morpheme.
  • A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning and consists of various forms of a root word. A compound lexeme contains multiple stems.
  • A lemma is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a lexeme. Lemmatization is the process of grouping together the inflected forms.
  • Stemming reduces inflected words to their word stem without dictionary lookup or grammatical context. Simpler but less accurate.
  • Cognate words descend from a common etymological ancestor.
  • A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language.
  • A token is a single instance of a word.
• An affix is attached to a word stem. circumfix, and transfix.
  • An adfix attaches outside a word stem: prefix, suffix
  • An infix inserts inside a word stem.
    • Slang
      • Expletive infix or tmesis like abso-bloody-lutely.
      • Homeric infix adds pseudo-sophistication: edu-ma-cation.
• A compound word contains multiple free morphemes.
• Morphological typology
  • An isolating language has one morpheme per word and no inflections or derivational morphemes.
  • An analytic language prefers prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers over affixes.
  • A synthetic or inflectional language has more morphemes per word. A polysynthetic language can express a sentence as a single highly inflected word.
    • Agglutinative languages: each inflection conveys only a single grammatical category.
    • Fusional or inflected languages use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. Latin declension combines gender, case, and number.
    • It denotes syntax using inflection and agglutination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Lexical_categories

Parts of speech

Also known as syntactic category. Some words can be used for different parts of speech.

Content words or open class words like verbs and nouns have semantic meaning. Function words, functors, or closed-class words express grammatical relationships with little lexical meaning. Few content words begin with the voiced th.

• A clitic is syntactically independent but phonologically dependent.

Verb (VB part of speech tag/abbreviation)

• Past (VBD): was were had
• Present 3P singular (VBZ): is has
• Present 1P/2P singular (VBP): am are have
• A transitive verb entails a direct object and “transfers” action.
  • Some verbs take only gerunds or only infinites as their object. (Purdue).
• An intransitive verb do not take a direct object.
• A ditransitive verb like give or tell takes two arguments (a theme and a recipient).
• A finite verb entails a subject and can be inflected for number or person.
• Nonfinite verb
  • A participle is a verb used as an adjective.
    • A gerundive is a future passive participle.
    • present participle: being having.
    • past participle (VBN): been had.
  • A gerund (VBG) or verbal noun functions as a noun: being having.
  • An infinitive is “to (verb)”. Can function as a noun (NOM) or adverb.
    • Splitting an infinitive means adding other words in the middle.
    • A particle gives another word meaning, like go to. Not a preposition.
  • A converb expresses adverbial subordination like (while) eating cakes, on being elected.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Transitivity_and_Valency
• Auxiliary verbs are closed class. They mark a verb phrase (VP) in a predicate and have little semantic content.
  • TreeTagger distinguishes “be” (VB) and “have” (VH) from other verbs (VV).
  • copula or linking verb: be, seem, appear
  • be: copula or linking verb or existential clause, progressive aspect, and passive voice
  • has, have, had: perfect aspect
  • will: future tense
  • would: future-in-the-past tense
  • do, did: do-support or emphasis, and question.
  • In AAVE: done (resultative modality), been (distant past tense)
  • modal auxiliary verb (MD)
    • contractions: cannot can’t shouldn’t
    • epistemic modality: likelihood of truth. could, would, might, will.
    • deontic modality: ethical permission and duty. may, shall, should, ought, had better, must.
    • dynamic modality: own ability and desire. can, dare, use, need.
  • light verbs have minimal semantic content: do, give, have, make, get, and take. Does not invert in questions.

Noun (NN). a person, animal, place, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea.

• singular or mass (NN¢) or plural (NNS).
• A proper noun (NP, NNP, NNPS) always identifies a single entity, usually capitalized in English. A common noun refers to a class of entities. A proper name is a noun phrase that identifies a single entity.
• Noun class: animate, rational, human, strong, augmentative
• A count noun or countable noun has discrete instances (fewer).
• A mass noun is continuous (less) and cannot take an indefinite article.
• Noun classifier or counter word such as three head of cattle. Common in Chinese, where 个 can be used with any noun.
• Nominalization or nouning like nominalized adjectives.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization
• A pronoun or pro-form stands in for another expression. Closed class.
  • personal (PP or PRP): I, me, us, he, him, she, it, them
  • a relative pronoun introduces a relative clause: that, which, who, whose, whom, whoever, whomever
• an expletive fills a grammatical position with no real meaning
  • it is raining, there are many people, do you like apples?

An adjective (JJ) modifies a noun.

• A nominal (“name”) is a noun or adjective. It provides semantic information and refers to real entities, and can be used as subject, object, or complement.
  • Cardinal number (CD) can act as noun or adjective: 21, one dollar.
• Adjectives qualify (black car), quantize, classify (solar energy)
• Comparative (JJR) and superlative (JJS)
• Modal adjectives: likely, probable and necessary.
• Usually a premodifier, except for a few words from postmodifier languages like French (time immemorial, court martial) and Irish (food galore).
• A determiner (DET, DT) modifies a noun, specifying which noun we are talking about.
  • Article
    • Discourse-referential, specifying the status in the universe of discourse: definite article (the), indefinite article (a/an).
    • Demonstrative (localizes or anchors): this, that, these, those
  • Quantifier: two, several, some, such, many, much
    • Predeterminer (PDT): all both half
    • each, either, neither, no
  • Possessive (PP$): my, their, them, her, his, our, ours
    • Apostrophe (POS)
  • An interrogative particle introduces a question. It can function as a determiner, pronoun, or adverb, depending on what we’re asking.
    • Wh-determiner (WDT): which whichever what when

Adverb (RB) modifies a verb, adjective, adverb, or sentence to indicate manner (“happily”), place, time, or degree. Often ends in “ly”.

• An adverbial modifies a verb or sentence: adverb, prepositional phrase, or noun phrase (We spoke this morning).
• Degree adverb: comparative RBR, superlative RSR
  • An intensifier like “very” is an expletive attributive, increasing emotional content. Cannot modify verbs.
    • What the hell is that, you’re freaking wrong, you bloody well know, That’s sodding great.

Transition phrases or connectives can make writing flow more smoothly. Uncommon in speech. A prepositional phrase can be used adverbially.

• Conjunctive adverbs or conjuncts introduce independent clauses as a non-sentence element. Acts to modify an entire sentence, not any sentence element.
• resultative or inferential: thus, therefore, hence, consequently, accordingly, as a result, for this reason, because of this
• similarity: likewise, similarly, equally, in the same way
  • additive: also, in addition, furthermore, besides, moreover
  • appositive, rephrasing: in other words
  • summative: in conclusion, in short, to sum up
  • example: for example, for instance, namely, specifically
• antithetic: however, otherwise, on the contrary, on the other hand, rather, still, yet, instead, conversely
• concessive: granted, although, even though, nevertheless, nonetheless, admittedly
• spatial: here, there, elsewhere
  • temporal: earlier, next, then, meanwhile, in the meantime, afterwards, later, finally, simultaneously, presently, subsequently
  • listing or enumeration: to begin with, first
• Adverbial phrase using an infinitive: “to be honest/frank/fair” “to tell the truth”
• A disjunct describes or expresses an attitude towards the sentence. Usually peripheral and set off with a comma or pause. Can be an infinite.
  • emphasis: further indeed actually clearly obviously certainly definitely clearly
  • frankly interestingly luckily (un)fortunately sadly mercifully thankfully gratefully naturally briefly oddly
  • mind you, believe it or not, needless to say, without a doubt, no doubt, above all, in fact, what’s more
• https://www.grammarbank.com/connectives-list.html

Conjunction

• A coordinating conjunction (CC) links multiple elements, mnemonic “fanboys”: for and nor but or yet so
  • Phrasal connective can be misleading since the second element carries less weight
    • along with, as well as, in addition to, together with
• A subordinating conjunction (IN) introduces a dependent clause.
  • so then well however thus because although when while
  • conditional: if unless provided (that) supposing (that) in case
• A correlative conjunction uses two words: both X and X.
• A complementizer (COMP) turns a clause into the subject or object of a sentence: that if whether for
  • Alice says that Bob is late.
  • I wonder if it will rain.
• A preposition (IN) or adposition expresses relationships between nouns. Can act as a subordinating conjunction. Not inflected.
  • space location or direction: to across at around near about on over above atop up upon towards among in into beyond down under below wherever “next to”
    • time: before after until
    • note that “to” is also part of the infinite verb form, which is distinct.
  • relationship: of for with/out concerning regarding
  • cause: by via through
    • by the way
  • like unlike depsite “according to”
  • role: whether, as, such as, as if, as though, as long as, whatever
  • circumposition has both preposition and postposition: from now on.
  • Double preposition: out of it.
  • Head-initial languages like English mainly use prepositions, while head-final languages use postpositions.

Other linguistic elements:

• disfluency
  • Interregnum (IM)
    • editing term
    • An interjection or filled pause (UH, F): huh uh oh eh ah
  • explicit editing term: I mean, sorry
  • discourse marker: you know, well
  • incomplete utterance
  • restart with repair
    • reparandum (RM) is taken back, interruption point (IP), then repair (RR)
    • show me trips (RM from Boston on) IP ((IM uh) (RR from Denver on Monday))
  • restart without repair
• existential there (EX)
• Foreign word (FW)
• sentence final punctuation (SENT): period, question mark, exclamation mark
• list marker (LS, LST): bullet, dash, caret
• Left and Right Round Bracket (LRB)
• symbol (SYM)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part-of-speech_tagging

Grammar

Grammatical category or aspect

• Inflection is used to express grammatical categories.
  • Conjugation is the inflection of verbs. The principal parts are the main verb forms.
  • Declension is the inflection of everything else.
  • Can be regular or irregular. A suppletion is an inflected form that is not cognate.
  • Periphrasis uses a larger number of words: more happy vs. happier.
  • Latin conjugation has four principal parts:
    • first person singular of the present indicative active
    • present infinitive active
    • first person singular of the perfect indicative active
    • supine or perfect passive participle.
• Subject-verb agreement for inflection.
  • Gender
  • Person: 1st, 2nd, or 3rd
  • Number: singular or plural
• Tense: position in time
• Aspect
  • Perfective aspect describes an event which is a complete whole.
  • Imperfective aspect describes an ongoing event with internal structure
    • Progressive aspect: current action
    • Continuous aspect: current state
    • Habitual aspect: will, would, be (AAVE)
    • Frequentative form: repeated action like blabber, sparkle, coo-cooing, chitchat.
• Mood and modality: relationship to truth.
  • The declarative mood or realis mood expresses a statement of fact.
    • evidentiality: what evidence exists for a statement
    • In contrast, irrealis moods refer to what is not necessarily real. They do not have truth value.
  • Subjunctive mood expresses an action, possibility, wish, etc that has not happened yet.
    • If I were to love you…
    • I suggest that you be careful.
  • A conditional mood expresses contingency: I would love you.
    • Counterfactual conditionals discuss what would be true under different circumstances.
  • Imperative mood is an order: Love me.
  • Not found in English: dubitative, hypothetical, desiderative, volitive (desired), inferential, optative (hope), permissive (is permitted), admirative, etc.
  • definite (specific thing) vs. indefinite (any thing)
  • mirativity: surprise
• Voice
  • Active voice: subject has the agent role.
  • Passive voice: subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb.
    • The logical subject (LGS) is the grammatical object instead of the surface subject (SBJ).
• Affect, attitude, or emotion
• Grammatical case represents the grammatical relation of a noun.
  • Nominative: subject
  • Accusative case: direct object
  • Dative case: indirect object. V to or V for.
  • Alative case: with, from, for, by N.
• case, animacy
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_polarity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Grammatical_categories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Grammatical_aspects

Parser

Parse tree

• 1961. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Corpus
• Penn Treebank (1989-1996), 7 million words with POS-tags, 3 million words of skeletal parsing, 2 million words with predicate-argument parsing
  • 1.6 million words of Switchboard corpus of telephone conversations, parsed with speech disfluency annotations.
• https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/submit-sentence-4.html
• https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/penn_treebank_pos.html
• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/ice-gb/index.htm
• Stanford parser

Semantic parser
Neural semantic parser

Phrase structure

Phrase structure is a tree of constituents or meaningful phrases, based on constituency relations.

• More mechanical: context-free grammar (CFG) and Chomskyan syntax.
  • Languages with rigid word order and clear constituent boundaries.
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order
  • 1970. X-bar theory by Noam Chomsky.
    • Every phrase is a X phrase headed by a category X (e.g. noun phrase, verb phrase, etc.).
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-bar_theory
• A phrase is a group of words that function as a single part of speech.
  • The head or nucleus determines the part of speech, and the rest are modifiers or dependents.
  • A modifier is usually an adjective, adverb, or preposition. But a noun can also modify: an inch taller.
    • Can be intersective: black cat.
      • A privative adjective seems to exclude members of the noun: fake pretend fictitious artificial. Non-subsective.
    • A subsective modifier can be intersective (skilled surgeon) or not (old friend). Can be used in predicative position.
    • A dangling modifier is ambiguous.
  • Verb phrase (VP), noun phrase (NP), adjective phrase (ADJP), adverb phrase (ADVP).
    • A referring expression is a noun phrase used to identify an individual object.
    • Determiner phrase: “not very many apples”.
  • An attributive expression modifies (expresses an attribute of) a noun and grammatically depends on it.
    • A noun adjunct or attributive noun: floof ball or goofball.
    • An attributive adjective or prepositive adjective: floofy cat.
  • An endocentric phrase has the same linguistic function as one of its parts.
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocentric_and_exocentric
• A clause has a subject and predicate.
  • The argument completes the meaning of a predicate, such as the object of a verb.
    • A complement is necessary for the sentence to be grammatical. A subject complement modifies the subject, and similarly object complement.
      • Adverbial complement: put or place back, We are staying here.
    • Subcategorization: verbs require/allow the presence and types of their arguments: X walks requires X to be animate.
  • An adjunct is an optional or structurally dispensable part.
    • A predication adjunct provides information about semantic roles. Can be an adverb or prepositional phrase.
  • A predicative expression follows a copula: the cat is floofy.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valency_(linguistics)
• An independent clause can stand by itself.
  • Simple declarative clause (S)
  • A dependent clause or subordinate clause (SBAR) begins with a relative pronoun or subordinating conjunction, so it cannot stand alone.
    • A relative clause modifies a noun: whom we met yesterday.
    • An adverbial clause functions as an adverb.
    • Test: dependent clause can be moved to the front: I dance when it rains -> when it rains, I dance.
  • A compound sentence has multiple independent clauses, joined by conjunction, colon, or semicolon.
    • Note that a coordinating conjunction is not part of the independent clause.
  • A complex sentence has a dependent clause.
    • A cleft sentence (CLF) emphasizes a specific part of a sentence. Without the emphasis, it can be expressed as a simple sentence.
      • It was John who ate the apple.
      • What I need is a vacation.
  • An incomplete sentence or sentence fragment has no independent clause.
  • A run-on sentence has multiple independent clauses without adequate conjunction or punctuation.
    • A comma splice is the use of a comma to join two independent clauses.
• An interrogative clause or question has subject-auxiliary inversion (SINV): Sam has -> has Sam.
  • Most questions are introduced by an interrogative particle or wh-element. The full structure is SBARQ, while the non-wh constituent or a yes-no question is SQ.
  • A rhetorical question can act as a declarative sentence: am I hungry!
  • wh-noun phrase (WHNP) and wh-pronoun (WP): what who whom
    • “that” is restrictive, while “which” is nonrestrictive
    • wh-pronoun possessive (WP$): whose
    • wh-prepositional phrase (WHPP): with whom, for what, in which, etc. Often sounds more awkward.
  • wh-adverb phrase (WHADVP) and wh-adverb (WRB)
    • how however whether where wherein why
• Asterisk prefix * usually indicates an ungrammatical sentence.

Null elements: wh-movement, passive

• A nominal sentence or equational sentence does not have a finite verb. A zero copula is when the subject and predicate are joined without a verb, possibly to syncope (omission).
  • pro-sentences have a null subject: yes, no, okay.
  • I consider John intelligent.
  • the more the merrier
  • Parliament in deadlock
  • What a great day today
  • commands: enough already! scalpel!
  • statements of existence or warnings: fire in the hole.
  • Vernacular: you from out of town? Where you at? Who dis?
  • sports announcing: Sam with the ball.
• A fronted or topicalized constituent (T) is a word or phrase moved to the start of a sentence for emphasis.
  • Anastrophe inverts the normal word order.
  • that book, I have read three times.
  • slowly, she walked down. (conjunctive adverb)
  • because I was tired, I went to bed early.
• Trapping problem in context-free grammar. Resolve using null elements for pseudo-attachment annotations to coindex noncontiguous structure.
  • wh-movement (T): What is he eating? eating(he, what). VP eating “what”.
  • Subject of infinitival construction
    • Sam (VP wants (VP to (throw the ball)))
    • “throw the ball” should also depend on “wants”: wants(Chris, throw(Chris, ball))
    • We can attach a null subject in front of throw which coindexes and resolves to wants.
  • passive voice
    • Ball (VP was (VP thrown (PP by Sam)).
    • predicate argument structure: throw(Sam, ball)
    • attach a null subject in front of “by Sam”.
• right-node raising (RNR): it has been, and is, good.
• permanent predictable ambiguity (PPA): ambiguous predicate even with context.
  • It is a pleasure to teach her. Do we like to teach someone or her specifically?
  • I saw the man in the coat.

1977. Construction grammar (CxG): the meaning of a sentence derives not just from its individual word meanings, but also its structure. Constructions are linguistic patterns like words, expressions, and grammatical rules which have learned meanings. By George Lakoff.

• A genitive construction indicates possessive or dependency.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_grammar
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_syntax

1993. Optimality theory. Language forms solve constraints. By Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky.

1993. Minimalist program by Noam Chomsky.

• An expression is a pair (π, λ) of phonetic form (PF) and logical form (LF).
  • Phonetic form is the articulatory-perceptual (A-P) interface.
  • Logical form is the conceptual-intentional (C-I) interface.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_form_(linguistics)
• Language is cognitive. Humans have a language faculty that interacts with other cognitive systems.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innateness_hypothesis
• Language is computational. Variation: arbitrary values, parameters, and the sound-meaning association.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_and_parameters
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure
• Merge operation. Assumes that speakers have a single way to combine words. Speakers combine two nodes at a time into sets, creating a binary parse tree.
  • Optionally, the theory can define a label for the new set, which is one of the inputs. For example label=drink for inputs=(drink, water). A simple merge model does not involve labels.
  • A first merge combines two words, which other merges can take sets.
  • Linear order is determined by phonological and information-structural considerations.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_(linguistics)
• Bare phrase structure replaces X-bar notation. Node labels are unneeded–just use the head word as the node.
• 2001. Strong minimalist thesis. Conceptual necessity: language is an optimal association of sound with meaning.
  • Economy of representation: grammatical structures exist for a purpose.
  • PF and LF are the only linguistic levels.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition
  • Acquire a lexicon and fix the parameter values.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalist_program

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase_structure_grammar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase_structure_rules
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_category
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_category
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_category
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational_grammar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_linguistics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:English_grammar

Dependency grammar

Dependency grammar represents dependency relations between words. One tree node per word. Shallower with many-to-many relations. Languages with free word order. More recent theory.

• Verb is the root. Subject and object depend on the verb.
• Modifier: adjective, adverb
  • A parenthetical (PRN) interrupts the main sentence to provide additional information, and can be removed without damaging the sentence.
    • An appositive is a noun phrase that identifies the previous noun in a different way. A nonrestrictive apositive is set off by commas, while a restrictive appositive does not have commas.
    • Aside: “, if you don’t mind,”
    • Introductory: “Once upon a time,”
    • Interjection: “, so help me!”
  • A resumptive modifier repeats a key phrase from the previous clause.
  • A summative modifier describes the previous content usually with new detail.
  • closely related (CLR): open class
• Patterns
  • S V (transitive) O, where O can be indirect object + direct object or object + object complement.
  • S V (linking) subject complement.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_grammar

1970. Categorial grammar

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorial_grammar
• http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/pdt2.0/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catena_(linguistics)

1979. Coding strings for corpus analysis. Columns: clause type (m = main), verb type (v = tensed verb), negation (N = negated), object type (p = pronoun), object position (i = object immediately after verb). Lisp tsort program could search coding strings.
1988. fidditch POS tagger used for Penn Treebank. Not very complete. By Donald Hindle. UX needs around 50 hours to learn. 1,000 words per hour for POS or annotation.

1991. Link grammar encodes grammatical constraints as directional links between words. By Davy Temperley and Daniel Sleator.

• It allows link cycles, which makes it easier to constrain ambiguous parses.
• Supports parse preference ranking by minimizing link cost.
• Requires a planar link graph. Empirically, link relations do not cross.
• In languages with rigid word order like English, we can infer the head of the phrase from the link type and direction.
• Link properties: singular (s) or plural (p). To the left (-) or right (+).
• Link from a subject (S+) to its finite verb: He (Ss+) looks.
  • “I” is usually plural (I (Sp*i+) run / *I runs), except “I (Spx-) am” and “I (Spx-) was”. Note that the Spx- connector links the verb left to “I”.
• Link from a transitive verb (O+) to its direct or indirect object: look (O+) here.
• Link from a determiner (D) to the noun it determines: the (D+) dog.
• Link from
• Link from the left-wall ^ (W+) or coordinating conjunction to an independent clause.
  • declarative: ^ (Wd+) She saw.
  • imperative: ^ (Wi) go away.
  • object question: ^ (Wq) who saw?
  • subject question: ^ (Ws) who is coming?
  • adjectival question: ^ (Wq) who did you speak to?
  • prepositional question: ^ (Wq) to whom did you speak?

Wordplay

Syntactic ambiguity or amphiboly: ambiguous syntax leads to multiple possible interpretations.

• Garden path sentence starts with a familiar parse that turns out to be incorrect. To lead someone down the garden path is to trick them.
  • Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana
  • The old man the boat
  • The horse raced past the barn fell
• “The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose” -Henry VI, Shakespeare. Unclear who shall depose who.
• “I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I don’t know” -Groucho Marx
• Ambiguous headlines or crash blossoms where nouns can be miscontrued as verbs.
  • Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms
  • “Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel”
  • MacArthur Flies Back to Front
  • Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans
  • Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
  • Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
  • British Left Waffles on Falklands.
  • Infant Pulled from Wrecked Car Involved in Short Police Pursuit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_play
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanaclasis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraprosdokian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_illusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_else
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_sentence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catachresis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernomyrdinka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colemanballs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dundrearyism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwynisms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

Semantics

• Syntax-semantics interface: scope, binding
  • Lexical semantic properties: verbal aspect, nominal individuation, semantic macroroles, unaccusativity
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_semantics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Formal_semantics

• A referent is the thing to which a name or symbol refers.
  • Coreferential expressions have the same referent.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantifier_(linguistics)
• Anaphora is an expression whose interpretation depends upon its antecedent.
  • Cataphora corefers with a postcedent.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphora_resolution
  • Winograd schema challenge: identify the antecedent of an ambiguous pronoun.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denotational_semantics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_semantics_(linguistics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_Representation_Theory
http://gmb.let.rug.nl/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PropBank

Functional tags

• categories: headline or dateline (HLN), title (TTL)
• semantic roles: vocative (direct address for a person), direction (DIR), location (LOC), manner (MNR), purpose or reason (PRP), time (TMP)

Taxonomy

Indo-European languages are the largest language family. They derive from a single Proto-Indo-European language spoken during the Neolithic. They have common words for mother, brother, dog, and have similar verb conjugations and noun declensions. Eight branches are extant:

• Indo-Iranian: Hindi, Urdu, Persian
  • Indo-Aryan
    • Vedic Sanskrit
      • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_grammar
• Germanic derives from Proto-Germanic spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia and Germany.
  • West Germanic derives from Proto-West-Germanic spoken c. 100 in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
    • North Sea Germanic (Ingvaeonic)
      • Anglo-Frisian.
        • Anglic
          • English
          • Scots derives from the Northumbrian dialect of Old English and Northern Middle English.
        • Frisian
      • Saxon
    • Irminonic
      • German (100 million native speakers)
      • Yiddish is Germanic with Hebrew influences
    • Istvaeonic
      • Dutch (24 million native speakers)
  • North Germanic
    • 800 Old Norse spoken in Scandinavia in the Viking Age
• 1000 BC Italic was spoken primarily in ancient Italy.
  • Latin. Becomes dominant by 300 due to the Roman Empire.
    • Romance: Spanish, French, Italian
• Balto-Slavic: Russian, Polish, Lithuanian
• Celtic: Irish, Scottish Gaelic
  • Insular Celtic > Brittonic (British). These languages have do-support like Modern English, but Old English does not.
    • Welsh, Breton, Cornish
• 1450 BC Mycenaean Greek in Linear B.
• Armenian
• Albanian
• Anatolian (extinct)
  • 1700 BC Written Hittite in Kültepe in eastern Anatolia
• 1887. Esperanto (“dreamer”) is the most spoken constructed language, with thousands of speakers.

Sino-Tibetan languages are the second-largest. They are analytic and tonal. The writing system is logographic.

• Sinitic: Chinese is the most spoken language.
  • Mandarin
  • Cantonese (Yue) especially in Guangdong.
• Tibeto-Burman
  • Burmese (33 million) lost its tones.
  • Tibetan (6 million)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreanic_languages

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_languages
  • 500 BC. Yayoi culture rice farmers from the Korean peninsula replace the indigenous languages.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji 汉字 Chinese characters, oldest, used during Old Japanese
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana phonetic syllabary
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana 平仮名 ひらがな (“common”)
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana 片仮名 カタカナ. “fragmentary” since it derives from parts of kanji. Used for italics, emphasis, foreign words, and onomatopoeia.
      • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gairaigo foreign words
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific_speech_in_Japanese
  • san = mr. sama for a formal business client or guest.
  • kun towards a younger man or child.
  • chan towards a young girl or child.

Afroasiatic languages descend from a single Proto-Afroasiatic language. There are six main branches:

• 2690 BC Egyptian hieroglyphs are the oldest attested language.
• Semitic
  • East Semitic
    • 2600 BC Akkadian cuneiform in Mesopotamia
    • 2400 BC Eblaite cuneiform in northeast Levant
  • Arabic (300 million native speakers)
    • Habibi: my dear
  • Hebrew
• Berber: Languages spoken by Berber communities in North Africa.
• Cushitic: Spoken in parts of East Africa, including Somalia and Ethiopia.
• Chadic: Found primarily in central and western Chad, with Hausa being the largest member.
• Omotic: This branch is geographically separated from the others, spoken mostly in southwestern Ethiopia.

Indigenous Uto-Aztecan languages

• Hopi language
• Aztec Nahuatl or Nahuan language

Language isolates

• 2600 BC Sumerian cuneiform in Mesopotamia.
• 2250 BC Elamite cuneiform in southwestern Iran.

History of English

• 500 Old English. Anglo-Saxon settlers displace the native British Celtic language. It is more inflected with freer word order. It has four dialects: Northumbrian to the north, Mercian in the east, West Saxon southwest, and Kentish southeast. Beowulf (1000) and other literature are written in the West Saxon dialect.
  • 597 Gregorian mission converts Anglo-Saxon England to Christianity. Latin writing replaces Anglo-Saxon runes. In 655 Mercia becomes officially Christian, and its dialect is the basis of Middle English. By 686 all Anglo-Saxon kings are Christian.
  • 865 Great Heathen Army. Vikings invade and settle in England, especially the Danelaw region in southeast England. Old Norse influence erodes complicated inflectional word endings, making English more analytic.
• 1100 Middle English. French influence after the Norman Conquest, and Old Norse from King Cnut in 1016. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
• 1470 Early Modern English. Printing press establishes the London Chancery Standard dialect (an East Midland dialect). Spelling becomes largely fixed.
• 1700 Modern English after the Great Vowel Shift. 400 million native and 1 billion total speakers.

Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue (1938) documents the jive language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Old_English

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_change

• Grammaticalization: nouns and verbs become grammatical markers.
  • content word -> grammatical word -> clitic -> inflectional affix.
  • Old English verb willan (“want”) becomes an auxiliary verb denoting future.
  • Proto-Germanic lika (“body”) becomes -ly and -like denoting similarity.
  • Semantic bleaching: morpheme comes to describe a broader range of ideas and becomes more abstract.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(word_formation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_functional_linguistics

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cline_of_instantiation
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratification_(linguistics)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafunction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue_and_parole

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion_(linguistics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_analysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_linguistics

• https://dmice.ohsu.edu/bedricks/courses/cs662/resources/hw6_files/tree.py
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_linguistics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_corpus
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_linguistics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Nonverbal_communication
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Natural_language_processing
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_method
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_grammar
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_linguistics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_linguistics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_theory
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcategorization
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_grammar
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_conjugation
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicative_expression
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverb
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Internet_slang
  https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Latin_grammar
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deixis
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_linguistics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Linguistics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Linguistic_typology_topics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_grammar
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treebank#Semantic_treebanks
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning-Text_Theory
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_chunk
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cambridge_Grammar_of_the_English_Language
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-driven_phrase_structure_grammar
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncope_(phonology)
  Style guide
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagram#See_also
  Language Log
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma