LING001 -- HW1 -- Answer Sheet

To give you a sense of how different well-informed people might approach these questions, the instructor and the three TAs have each given answers for about a quarter of the examples.

In each case, we'll give you credit for additional answers if you give a plausible argument for them; and we won't deduct much for missing portions of answers if you get the important parts of the answer correct.

[1-7 provided by Mark Liberman]

1. An event structure account of English resultatives. This article clearly deals with syntax, as notions like "direct object" and "intransitive verb" are invoked. Semantics is also involved, since "event structure" has to do with the meaning of verbs, and in fact the central point is to propose a certain relationship between meaning and form in verbal constructions, in opposition to a purely syntactic account. The paper addresses issues in theoretical linguistics (there have been several applications of this line of research in psycholinguistics and in computational linguistics, but there is no evidence of this in the abstract).

2. The prosodic phrasing of clause-final prepositional phrases. This article deals with all levels of linguistic analysis, though phonetics is not explicitly mentioned in the abstract. The main focus is on text-to-speech technology, which is part of what is sometimes called "language engineering". "Computational linguistics" would be a reasonable term to use as well.

3. Decomposing Pronouns. This article deals with syntax (because it proposes three syntactic categories with three different tree structures), semantics (because it deals with anaphoric reference), and morphology (because it deals with substructure of pronoun forms in some languages. The area is theoretical linguistics.

4. Multiple Verb Movement in Hoan. This article involves morphology (because it deals with the analysis of compound verbs) and syntax (because this analysis involves a postulated relationship between compound words and syntactic phrases). In the full article, there is a good deal of discussion of semantics as well. The area is theoretical linguistics.

5. The heritability of language. This article, which reviews more than 100 works on genetics of language abilities (and disabilities), deals with all levels of linguistic analysis. Morphology and syntax are explicitly mentioned in the abstract. Relevant subfields include psycholinguistics, anthropological linguistics, and the biological bases of linguistic abilities. Clinical issues are also involved.

6. The timing of nonmodal phonation in vowels. This article deals with phonetics (the fine details of timing of laryngeal activity) and with phonology (because language are compared according to whether breathiness and pharyngealization of vowels are a distinctive part of the phonological system, or are a consequence of properties of adjacent consonants). The article is mainly a theoretical one, though obviously there are applications to the description of certain languages.

7. The influence of L1 on the acquisition of Swedish quantity by native speakers of Spanish, English and Estonian. This article deals with phonetics (because details of vowel quality variation are involved) and with phonology (because the effect of the distinctive categories in the speaker's native phonological system is at issue). The subfield is "applied linguistics", which as you have learned is mainly used to refer to "second language teaching and learning".

[8-12 provided by Jinyoung Choi]

8. Morphology is at issue because the purpose of this article is to develop a part-of-speech tagging system for unknown morphemes in Korean. In addition, since the methods of guessing unknown morphemes are based on syllable pattern, we can say that phonology is also involved. This study deals with computational linguistics in that it develops a computer program to match each morpheme with appropriate part-of-speech.

9. This article deals with a semantic issue, i.e. coreferential anaphora resolution. This study tries to find out what a noun phrase(including pronoun) refers with a computational system. So computational linguistics is involved.

10. This paper presents a computational method to provide a searchable index for spoken audio documents. Phonetic anlaysis would be essential to analyse spoken data, and semantics should be involved to find latent semantic structure and provide a search index tool. This is also a computational linguistics paper.

11. Speech acts are one of the important topics in Pragmatics. This article particularly provides a computer program to model the syntactic characteristics of a speech act. So syntax is also at issue. In addition, phonetic investigation would be also combined to analyse spoken data. Computational Linguistics.

12. Since this paper is to study tongue surface motion which articulates speech sounds, phonetics is involved. The main purpose of this study is to observe and reconstruct the motion of tongue (with ultrasound imaging), so it seems that this study belongs to biology-linguistics interface.

13. Phonetic methods are applied in that the paper investigates how a formant behaves on the vowel axis. Theoretical Linguistics or computational linguistics also?

[13-19 provided by Uri Horesh]

14. The level of analysis is phonology. While this is sign language and no actual *sounds* are involved, research has shown that the sign language equivalents, handshapes, interact with one another in a similar manner as do audible sounds, rendering phonological analysis viable for such languages. Since it deals with variation, and since social factors are explicitly mentioned in the abstract as a relevant factor, this paper is also within the field of sociolinguistics.

15. The analysis of verb tense is complex and spans across morphology, syntax and semantics. Morphology is relevant because we are dealing with the formation of verb forms and in this particular instance the question of suffixation is raised. Syntax is involved, because the issue of agreement across words in a clause or sentence is interesting here. And the role that tense markers play in conveying various temporal meanings is within the realm of semantics. The variationist approach taken by the author indicates links to sociolinguistics. The comparative method is a staple of historical linguistics.

16. Vocalization of a liquid in various environments is a phonological phenomenon. That some environments favor it over others indicates interaction between sounds, moving us beyond pure phonetics. The study of various speech communities is part of a sociolinguistics approach, and as different local patterns are examined as well, geographical linguistics (or dialect geography) is also a related field.

17. Agreement is typically dealt with in syntax. Morphology may also be relevant, as categories such as number are often marked within a word by some affixed morpheme (and in this case, it seems, a zero-morpheme may also play a role). Since the article deals with units longer than sentences, we might want to consider discourse analysis as well. The quantitative approaches mentioned in the abstract point to a type of sociolinguisitc analysis. The mentioning of processing may indicate a tie to psycholinguistics.

18. This study involves the phonology-syntax interface, as it examines how the prosodic realization of a sentence affects its internal structure. Pragmatics is also involved to some extent. The approach taken here is a psycholinguistic one, since sentence processing is at issue, and also a neurolinguistic one, as EEG measurements are used.

19. Since this paper examines how speakers define the meaning of certain words, it probably falls under the semantic level of analysis, more specifically, lexical semantics. Comparing the mental lexicon across speakers is a task for psycholinguists, yet the variation in these speakers' social backgrounds also makes room for a sociolinguistic study of the same data.

[20-25 provided by Sergio Romero]

20. From the abstract I gather that this article touches fundamentally on the Phonology level of analysis, and pertains to a number of disciplines related to linguistics including sociolinguistics (relation between social variables and language use), applied linguistics (language planning), history (social history of Cameroon) and anthropology (ethnicity, tribal and national identities). The adequacy of orthographic systems to mark tone requires some phonological analysis. It does not seem to be addressing directly any strictly phonetic issue or any other level beyond phonology.

21. From the abstract and a brief perusal of the article, I gather that it addresses fundamentally the Phonology and Morphology levels, and their interrelationship (Morphophonology). It pertains to Historical Linguistics since it describes some diachronic processes. One could argue that it touches on the Phonetics level in its analysis of allophony where there is some discussion of levels of segment aperture.

22. The article analyzes Kashaya at the level of Morphology, specifically Kashaya's infixation patterns, and Phonology (the way phonological constraints affect infixation). Phonetics is also touched upon (prosody).

23. The article addresses issues in Syntax and Pragmatics, namely left-dislocation as a syntactic process influenced by discourse factors (Pragmatics).

24. The article is a classic in variationist Sociolinguistics. Data is analyzed at the levels of Phonetics, Phonology and Pragmatics. There is a through analysis of the vowel system of upper class Philadelphians, including careful measurements of physical variables to quantify sub-phonemic variations across different social groups (Phonetics). Kroch also gives observations about the speech style of upper class speech in terms of phonetic (prosody, stress) and pragmatic data ("long speeches", use of intensifying modifiers for emphasis effects). One could argue there is a link with Sociology and maybe local history.

25. The article pertains to Historical Linguistics and analyzes textual data at the levels of Syntax and Morphology. It draws conclusions from diachronic processes that help us understand synchronic English Syntax.