SEMANTICS : THE ANALYSIS OF MEANING

Semantics, is the study of meaning in human language.

Synonymy
Synonyms are words or expressions that have the same meanings in some or all contexts.

Antonymy
Antonyms are words or phrases that are opposites with respect to some component of their meaning.

Polysemy
Occurs where a word has two or more related meanings.

Homophony

Exists where a single form has two or more entirely distinct meanings.

Lexical ambiguity - in that a single form has two or more meanings.

Paraphrase
Two sentences that can have the same meaning are said to be paraphrases of each other.

Entailment
A relation in which the truth of one sentence necessarily implies the truth of another.

Contradiction
Sometimes, it turns out that if one sentence is true, then another sentence must be false.

Connotation
One notion that is closely linked with the concept of meaning is connotation.

Denotation
One well-known approach to semantics attempts to equate the meaning of a word
or phrase with the entities to which it refers-its denotation or referents.

Whereas an expression's extension corresponds to the set of entities that it picks out in the world (its referents),
its intension corresponds to its inherent sense, the concepts that it evokes.

Componential analysis or semantic decomposition,- another approach to meaning tries to represent a word's
in tension by breaking it down into smaller semantic components.

THE CONCEPTUAL SYSTEM

Reveals about how meaning is expressed through language

Fuzzy concept.- does not have clear-cut boundaries. Many linguists believe that this type of fuzziness pervades
the human conceptual system: Certainly, 'it is not hard to think of everyday concepts whose boundaries are

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Language Acquisition - the phenomenon o f linguistic development
the end result of this process is actually a grammar
the mental system that allows people to speak and understand a language.

The naturalistic approach

Investigators observe and record children's spontaneous verbal behavior. One type of
naturalistic investigation is the so-called diary study.

The experimental approach

Researchers typically make use of specially designed tasks to elicit linguistic activity relevant to
the phenomenon that they wish to study.
 Cross-sectional in that it investigates and compares children (or groups of children) of different
ages

Babbling.
It is likely that babbling provides children with the opportunity to experiment with and begin to gain control
over their vocal apparatus-an important prerequisite for later speech.

Syllable simplification
One frequent process in children's speech involves the systematic deletion of certain sounds in order
to simplify syllable structure.

2) Substitution
One of the most widespread phonetic processes in early language involves substitution- the systematic
replacement of one sound by an alternative that the child finds easier to articulate.

Stopping,
The replacement of a fricative by a corresponding stop; fronting, the moving forward of a sound's place
of articulation

Gliding,
The replacement of a liquid by a glide

Denasalization,
The replacement of a nasal stop by a no nasal counterpart.

3) Assimilation - The modification of one or more features of a segment under the influence of neighboring
sounds

Determining factors
What, then, determines the order of acquisition of nonlexical categories and bound morphemes? Research on a
variety of languages suggests that several factors are involved.
1. Frequent occurrence in utterance-final position Children show a greater tendency to notice and remember
elements that occur at the end of the utterance than those found in any other position.

2. Syllabicity Children seem to take greater notice of morphemes such as -ing, which can constitute syllables on
their own, than the plural or possessive suffix, whose principal allomorphs (Is/ and /z/) are single consonants.

3. A straightforward relation between form and meaning Whereas the word the functions only as a determiner
in English, the verbal suffix -s simultaneously represents three linguistic categories: person (third), number
(singular), and tense (nonpast). This latter type of morpheme is more diffirult for children to acquire.

4. Few or no exceptions in the way it is used Whereas all singular nouns form the
possessive with -'s, not all verqs use -ed to mark the past tense (saw, read, drove).
Such exceptlons hinder the language acquisition process.

5. Allomorphic invariance · Whereas the affix -ing has the same form for all verbs, the past tense ending -ed has
three major allomorphs-/t/ for verbs such as chase, /di for forrris such as crave, and /ad/ for verbs such as recite.
This type of allomorphic variation, which also occurs with the plural, possessive, and third person singular
affixes in English, slows morphological pevelopment.

6. Clearly discemable semantic function Wher4'!as morphemes sucn as plural –s express easily identifiable
meanings, some morphemes (such as the third person singular -s) make no obvious contribution to the meaning
of the sentence. Acquisition of this latter type of morpheme is relatively slow.

T H E O N E-WORD STAGE
As noted earlier, children begin to produce one-word utterances between the ages of twelve and eighteen
months.

1) holophrases (literally 'whole sentences').

Ex: DADA- I see daddy.
dada
down
door
here
mama
again

THE TWO-WORD S TA G E
Within a few months of their first one-word utterances, children begin to produce two-word 'mini-
sentences'.

Baby chair
Doggie bark
Ken water
Hit doggie
Daddy hat

THE TELEGRAPHIC STAGE

A noteworthy feature of the telegraphic stage is that despite the emergence of complex new syntactic
structures, children make virtually no word order errors.

STAGE Age Development

Holophrastic 1-1.5 yrs single word utterances; no structure
early word combinations; presence
Two-word 1. 5-2 yrs
of syntactic categories unclear
emergence of phrase structure,
telegraphic 2-2.5 yrs especially head-complement and
subject-VP patterns
emergence of nonlexical categories
latter 2.5 yrs
(Det, Aux)

THE ACQUISITION OF WORD MEANING

Overextension
In cases of overextension, the meaning of the child's word is more general or inclusive than that of the
corresponding adult form. While overextensions are the most frequent type of word-meaning error in early
language
The basis for overextension
An important issue in the study of language acquisition has to do with whether children's
overextensions are the result of similarities in the appearance (shape, size, texture) or the function of the objects
to which the overextended word refers.

Underextension
By using lexical items in an overly restrictive fashion.

SPATIAL AND DIMENSIONAL T E R M S

English has many words that are used to express spatial relations (such a s in, on, and behind).

Dimensional terms
Like words referring to spatial relations, terms describing size and dimensions are also acquired in a
relatively fixed order, depending on their generality. The first dimensional adjectives to be acquired, big and
small, are the most general in that they can be used for talking about any aspect of size (height, area, volume,
and so on).

THE INTERPRETATION OF SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Thematic roles
Children learning English are able to associate thematic roles with particular structural positions at a
very early point in the acquisition process. By the time their average utterance length is two words, they are able
to respond correctly about
75 percent of the time to comprehension tests involving simple active sentences
such as 15), in which the truck is the agent and the car is the theme.

DETERMINANTS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

T H E ROLE OF IMITATION AND CORRECTION

At one time, i t was widely believed that children learn language by simply imitating the speech of
those around them. We now know that this cannot be true, since many utterance types produced by children do
not closely resemble structures found in adult speech. Such selective imitation suggests that children do not
blindly mimic adult speech, but rather exploit it in very restricted ways to improve
their linguistic skills.

Correction
Another classic attempt to explain language development is based on the assumption that parents provide
children with direct linguistic training by correcting ill formed utterances.

THE ROLE OF ADULT SPEECH

A good deal of recent work has been devoted to the search for a possible relationship between language
acquisition and the type of speech that is typically addressed to young language learners. Such speech is often
called motherese or caregiver speech.

T H E ROLE OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Cognitive development is the name given to the emergence of the various mental abilities and skills that
make up the human intellect.

Indeed, prominent psychologists have suggested both that general cognitive development shapes
language acquisition (a view put forward by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget) and that language acquisition is
crucial to other aspects of cognitive development (a position associated with the Russian pyschologist Lev
Vygotsky) .

Object Permanence
The ability to recognize that objects have an existence independent of one's interaction with them.
Object permanence emerges around age eighteen months, just prior to a period of rapid growth in the child's
vocabulary. During the first twenty-four months of their lives, children also acquire the ability to classify
objects and actions. They seem to understand that certain things are eaten, others can be sat upon, and still
others serve as toys, and so on.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) research investigates how people attain proficiency in
a language which is not their mother tongue. So, whether we are looking at someone learning to read Greek in
college, or someone becoming fluent in a fifth language in their forties, or a child acquiring a new language
after moving to a new country, we call the process second language acquisition. The interesting phenomenon
of children simultaneously acquiring two languages is generally investigated in the field known as bilingualism

Interlanguage (IL) grammar

So-called because it is influenced by both the first and the second language and has features of each

THE ROLE OF THE FIRST LANGUAGE

The term transfer is used to describe the process whereby a feature or rule from a learner's first
language is carried over to the IL grammar.

THE ROLE OF THE SECOND LANGUAGE

The first language is not the only influence on the lnterlanguage grammar, since
some properties of the IL can be traced to aspects of the L2.

THE NATURE OF AN INTERLANGUAGE

 The dual nature of IL grammars is captured in the Ontogeny Model of second language acquisition.
According to this model, there are two types of error in an IL grammar: transfer errors and developmental
errors.

THE FINAL STATE

Grammatical competence has to do with knowledge of the core components of the grammar: phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

Textual competence involves knowledge of the rules that string sentences together to make a well formed text
in the spoken or written language.

The speaker's intent in producing an utterance is referred to as illocutionary force.

Illocutionary competence refers to the ability to comprehend a speaker's intent, and to produce a variety of
syntactic structures to convey a particular intent in various circumstances.

Sociolinguistic competence

We use a different style of language in informal situations than we do in formal ones. In order to be
sociolinguistically competent, second language learners need to be able to comprehend and produce a variety
of social dialects appropriately.

INTERLANGUAGE GRAMMARS

When linguists try to deal with the notions of ease or simplicity, they make use of the notion of markedness.
Structures that are simple and/or especially common in human language are said to be unmarked, while
structures that are complex or less common are said to be marked. So, we might say that a sound that is found in
relatively few of the world's languages (e.g., (9]) is marked, whereas a sound that occurs in many of the world's
languages (e.g., [t]) is unmarked.

The Markedness Differential Hypothesis investigates second language acquisition in terms of typological
universals by comparing the relative markedness of structures in the L1 and the L2.

FACTORS AFFECTING SLA

AGE
One of the obvious ways that language learners vary is in their age. People start learning second languages
at different points in their lives.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Learners vary in ways other than age. Broadly speaking, the research asks the question, "if learners have
a particular quality x, does this make them better at second language acquisition?" For example, we might look
at the effect of inhibition, left-handedness, or some other individual trait on LZ ability. As appealing as this
avenue is, it is one that must be taken carefully. In particular, there are three points on which we must be
explicit: how we define and measure 2. x what it means to be better 3. what aspect of communicative
competence we are referring to.

Affective factors
Affective factors have to do with the emotional side of learning a second language. Clearly there is a
great deal at stake emotionally when learning a second language, and it is possible that emotions affect how
successful a second language learner is.

Traditionally, two types of motivation have been proposed: instrumental and integrative.

Instrumental motivation involves wanting to learn the L2 (or a specific goal or reason).
Integrative motivation, on the other hand, involves wanting to learn the L2 in order to learn more about a
particular culture or fit into it better.

Cognitive factors
 While affective factors have something to do with the emotional side of learning, cognitive factors
involve the mechanics of how an individual learns something.

THE GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNER

1. Has an [effective] personal learning style or positive learning strategies.

2. Has an active approach to the learning task.
3. Has a tolerant and outgoing approach to the target language and empathy with its speakers.
4. Has technical know-how about how to tackle a language.
5. Has strategies of experimentation and planning with the object of developing
6. The new language into an ordered system and revising this system progressively. Is consistently searching for
meaning.
7. Is willing to practice.
8. Is willing to use the language in real communication.
9. Has self-monitoring, ability and critical sensitivity to language u􀇈e.
10. ls able to develop the target language more and more as a separate reference system and is able to learn to
think in it.

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS :THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Psycholinguistics is the study of exactly these language processing mechanisms. Psycholinguists study
how word, sentence, and discourse meaning is represented and computed in the mind. They study how complex
words and sentences are composed in speech and how they are broken down into their constituent parts during
listening and reading. In short, psycholinguists seek to understand how language is done.

 Series of jerks called saccades.

SLIPS OF THE TONGUE:

 Spoonerisms are slips of the tongue named after the Reverend William A. Spooner

The 'tip-of-the-tongue' phenomenon, in which we are temporarily unable to access a word, is particularly
revealing of how flexible access to the mental lexicon can be.

Lexical decision
In the lexical decision paradigm, the experimental subject:

Two dependent variables

The time that it takes for a subject to respond (response latency) and whether or not the subject's judgment is
correct (response accuracy).

Frequency effect. Assuming that longer response times reflect processing that is more difficult or complex, this
finding suggests that our mental dictionaries are organized so that words we typically need more often (the
frequent words) are more easily and quickly available to us.

The priming paradigm:

Priming experiments typically involve the same procedure as the lexical decision task except that the
word to be judged (now called the target) is preceded by another stimulus (called the prime).

Priming effect -Response time is faster than it otherwise.

Timed-reading experiments
Timed-reading experiments begin with the assumption that the more difficult sentence processing is, the
longer it should take. Therefore, by timing how long it takes subjects to read particular sentence types or parts
of sentences, we can study the determinants of sentence-processing difficulty.

Regressive saccades are backward jumps in a sentence and are usually associated with mis-parsing or
miscomprehension.

BRAIN ACTIVITY: EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS

ERP experiments measure electrical activity in the brain.

LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND LINGUISTICS

Features
In both linguistics and psycholinguistics, the term feature is used to refer to most basic level of representation.