Contact details
Dr Nicola McLelland
Tel. 0115 951 5822
Consultation hours
Introduction to linguistics – The sounds of German
R21118
Dr Nicola McLelland
Sounds
Words
Sentence
Context
Levels of linguistic analysis
Sounds
Words
Sentence
Context
phonetics
phonology
the lexicon: lexis
word-shape: morphology
word-meaning: semantics
syntax
Pragmatics
Discourse analysis
Levels of linguistic analysis
First … what we won’t cover here …
The middle and bottom of the pyramid
semantics
morphology
syntax
pragmatics
discourse analysis
Sounds
Words
Sentence
Context
The bottom of the pyramid …
Language in context
1.Pragmatics – the study of meaning in context
- Können Sie das Fenster aufmachen?
- Ja. (no accompaning action!)
The bottom of the pyramid …
Language in context
1. Pragmatics – the study of meaning in context
- Können Sie das Fenster aufmachen?
- Ja. (no accompaning action!)
Or, recognizing the speech act, a request:
- Ja, gerne. (opens window)
Language in context
2. Discourse analysis
- Turn-taking and other “unwritten rules” in conversations
- The structure of written texts
(NB “discourse” has a different meaning in linguistics to that in cultural theory!)
The centre of the pyramid: words and sentences
the lexicon: lexis
word-shape: morphology
word-meaning: semantics
Words
Lexis is ….
the vocabulary of a language
-The aspect of the language where change is most noticeable to speakers themselves
Language contact
and new lexisBorrowing
•der Reseller
•Billing
•Das IT-Team
Language contact
and new lexisLoan translation
• Telekommunikationsbranche (cf. “telecomms. industry”)
Loan creation
• Führungsaufgabe
(cf. “management role”)
“Man sagt, dass die Deutschen viel arbeiten, aber der durchschnittliche Brite hat im Jahre 2004 drei Stunden länger gearbeitet als sein deutscher Kollege.”
What is a word?
How many words here?
“Man sagt, dass die Deutschen viel arbeiten, aber der durschnittliche Brite hat im Jahre 2004 drei Stunden länger gearbeitet als sein deutscher Kollege.”
23 words?
“Man sagt, dass die Deutschen viel arbeiten, aber der durschnittliche Brite hat im Jahre 2004 drei Stunden länger gearbeitet als sein deutscher Kollege.”
Two different words? Or one word in two different forms?
“Man sagt, dass die Deutschen viel arbeiten, aber der durschnittliche Brite hat im Jahre 2004 drei Stunden länger gearbeitet als sein deutscher Kollege.”
What about Deutschen and deutscher?
Adjective and noun ….
The problem ….
“word” is too vague to be a useful word in linguistics!
Wen hat die Studentin gestern gesehen?
The solution: lexemes
Lexis:
the vocabulary of a language
6 lexemes:
wer
haben
der/die/das
studentin
gestern
sehen
The solution:
1 lexeme ………
Wer
Haben
Sehen …?
Many word-forms
wer, wen, wem, wessen
haben, habe, hast, hat, habt, gehabt, hatte, etc.
Lexeme
sehen
Word-forms
sehe, siehst, sieht, seht, sehen, sah, sahst, sahen, […] gesehen
Looking at the word-forms …
How can we analyse these different word-
forms?
Word-forms
sehe, siehst, sieht, seht, sehen, sah, sahst, sahen, […] gesehen
We need a unit of analysis smaller than a word …..
We need a unit of analysis smaller than a word …..
Introducing ….
We need a unit of analysis smaller than a word …..
Introducing …. the morpheme!
A morpheme is ….The smallest unit of language that carries meaning
(“die kleinste bedeutungstragende Einheit”)
Studentin = Student+in 2 morphemes
Gestern = gestern 1 morpheme
Gesehen = ge+seh+en 3 morphemes (or 2?)
Morphology is ….
the study of word structure
It examines the internal structure of words.
Morphology of the job ad.
Führungsaufgabe bei Telekommunikationsunternehmen
How many morphemes here?
Morphology of the job ad.
führ + ung + s + auf + gab + e + bei + tele + kommunik + ation + s
+ unter + nehm + en
How many morphemes here?
Wen hat die Studentin gestern gesehen?
Student+ingestern
ge+seh+en
You can probably tell that there are different kinds of morphemes!
Word meaning … semantics
Concept
+ man-made+ glass+ light source
Linguistic sign
light bulbGlühbirne
Referent
Words …
•Lexis
•Morphology
•Semantics
Now on to sentences …
Syntax is the study of sentence structure
Jutta trinkt einen Tee im Café mit ihrem Freund
Now on to sentences …
Syntax is the study of sentence structure
Jutta trinkt einen Tee im Café mit ihrem Freund
OR …
Einen Tee trinkt Jutta im Café mit ihrem Freund
3 approaches to sentence structure
1.We can note the order the words come in
e.g. Jutta trinkt einen Tee mit ihrem Freund
“Canonical word order”: SVO
1. Rules about word order …
We can contrast the word order in different types of clauses
e.g. Sie kommt nicht zum Seminar, weil sie immer noch im Café sitzt.
Main clause: V2 (verb second)
Dependent clause: V-last (verb comes last)
1. Rules about word order …
1.…. We can state rules about the position of nicht, about the order of objects, etc.
e.g. *Nicht sie kommt zum Seminar, weil sie immer noch im Café sitzt.
e.g. Sie schenkt ihrem Mann ein Buch.
Sie schenkte es ihm.
*Sie schenkte ihm es.
1. Rules about word order …
… the order of objects:
e.g. Sie schenkt ihrem Mann ein Buch.
Sie schenkte es ihm.
*Sie schenkte ihm es.
…. What’s the rule?
1. Rules about word order …
…. the order of objects:
e.g. Sie schenkt ihrem Mann ein Buch.
Sie schenkte es ihm / ihrem Mann.
*Sie schenkte ihm es.
…. Normally animate object precedes inanimate. But an accusative pronoun object must come first.
1. Rules about word order …
Problem: useful rules for learners, but they don’t tell us much about the structure of the sentence, or why some constructions are ungrammatical
…Other, more theoretical approaches:
Look at word groups and how they fit together:
2. Valency grammar (esp. in Germany)
3. grammar (esp. in Anglo-Saxon tradition)
2. Valency grammar
Cf. chemistry …!
(where the valency of an element tells you how many atoms of it are needed to form a compound)
2. Valency grammar
In grammar, the valency of a verb tells us what construction it requires to be grammatical.
e.g. Sie schenkte ihrem Mann ein Buch
*Sie schenkte
*Sie schenkte ihrem Mann
2. Valency grammar …
e.g. Sie schenkte ihrem Mann ein Buch
Schenken needs:
A subject sie
A direct object ein Buch
An indirect object ihrem Mann
2. Valency grammar …
Compare:
Sie traf ihren Freund.
Treffen needs two elements:
A subject sie
A direct object ihren Freund
2. Valency grammar …
Valency also allows us to make useful contrasts between German and English
e.g. He followed me.
One element, a direct object.
Er folgte mir.
One element, an indirect object.
A subject meine Schwester
e.g. Der Junge spielte mit dem Ball.
S
NP VP
D N V PP
P NP
D N
Der Junge spielte mit dem Ball
3. Generative grammar …
3. Generative grammar …
S = Sentence
NP = Noun phrase
VP = Verb phrase
PP = Prepositional phrase
D = Determiner
N = Noun, V = Verb, D = Determiner
P = Prepostion
3. Generative grammar …
Syntactic trees like this make the internal structure of the sentence clearer –
e.g. they reflect our sense that mit dem Ball is more closely tied to spielte than it is to der Junge
3. Generative grammar …
… tries to generate tree structures like this using rules that reflect what native speakers just “know” intuitively
… rules that produce all possible grammatical sentences, no ungrammatical ones
… easier said than done!
And finally … applying the theory
… Applied linguistics
Speech therapy
Speech synthesis and recognition
Lexicography
Translation
… and foreign language learning
Applied linguistics:
language acquisition… the process by which learners acquire
a second language
- Stages which all learners progress through
- Typical error patterns
a better understanding of your
own learning …. More later!
Back to the top of the pyramid …
Phonetics and Phonology
Phonology is …
studying the sound system of languages, how sounds behave in languages
Das Rathaus ist rot und grün.
rot /ro:t/ (3 phonemes)
(transcription using the IPA, international phonetic alphabet)
Phonetics is …
the study of speech sounds
• how speech sounds are produced• their acoustics (sound waves)• how speech sounds are perceived
Acoustic phonetics
Das Rathaus ist rot …
= [Ro:t] or [ro:t] or ….!
[R] uvular trill 2 allophones of the[r] alveolar trill phoneme /r/
(Another example: Contrast German l and English velarized l in hell)
Phonology
The phoneme: the smallest unit of meaning that distinguishes meaning (die kleinste bedeutungunterscheidende Einheit)
(morpheme – die kleinste bedeutungstragende Einheit)!
Phonological rules
Regular processes that can be expressed as “rules” (often using formal notation, a bit like in mathematics)
Phonological rules …
What’s the regular process behind the fact that these words all sound as if they end in a /p, t, k/ (and not the sounds b, d, g as the spelling suggests?
Bund, fand, Hand, Mund, Grab, Schub, ab, trug, schlug, arg …
Auslautverhärtung
Lit. hardening of the final sound (der Auslaut)
“hardening” = devoicing
Applies to all voiced stops at the end of a syllable in German (not just end of a word – cf. abholen)
Minimal pairs
Which of these pairs are minimal pairs in German? (ie. They differ only by one crucial phoneme)
Hand / Land, Sank / Sang, rot / Boot
Kennen / können, Saal / soll, mehr / Mauer
Bad / bat, Friede / Friese, frische / mische
Ei / Eier, Fuß / Kuss, Schuh / Kuh
Which phonemes can we identify from the minimal pairs, then?
Minimal pairs
Hand / Land, Sank / Sang, rot / Boot
Kennen / können, Saal / soll, mehr / Mauer
Bad / bat, Friede / Friese, frische mische
Ei / Eier, Fuß / Kuss, Schuh / Kuh
Which phonemes can we identify from the minimal pairs, then?
Minimal pairs
Hand / Land, Sank / Sang, rot / Boot
Kennen / können, Saal / soll, mehr / Mauer
Bad / bat, Friede / Friese, frische mische
Ei / Eier, Fuß / Kuss, Schuh / Kuh
Which phonemes can we identify from the minimal pairs, then?
Minimal pairs
Hand / Land, Sank / Sang, rot / Boot
Kennen / können, Saal / soll, mehr / Mauer
Bad / bat, Friede / Friese, frische mische
Ei / Eier, Fuß / Kuss, Schuh / Kuh
Which phonemes can we identify from the minimal pairs, then?
/h l k η (=eng) r b d z ∫ / and vowels including /œ ε α/
Notation
We’ve seen that letters do not give a good guide to actual sounds:
More than one letter = one sound (<sch, ng, th>)
One letter can represent different sounds in different contexts: <Bad, ich bade>, <gierig>
the International Phonetic Association notation (IPA)
So we use different notation to make it clear that we are talking about actual sounds (which may be spelled differently within a language and also in different languages):
The IPA script – see your handout
Some symbols are similar to ordinary spelling, which makes them easier to remember – but unlike letters, they always have the same sound value
Making it clear what we are talking about …
< b,d g>: these < > brackets tell us we are talking about spelling – graphemes (written sybmols) only
Making it clear what we are talking about …
/ b d g/ : the / / tell us that we are talking about phonemes, sounds that distinguish meaning in a language
[ bh ] : [ ] indicates phonetic transcription: we transcribe what we hear, in more or less detail (narrow vs. broad transcription), which may or may not be phonemic
(we may not know yet, if we are transcribing a language for the first time, or we may not care for our purposes anyway ….)
In this module …
We will mainly be learning to transcribe phonemes
But we will be talking about greater phonetic detail some of the time – e.g. when we talk about regional variation or when we are contrasting German and English “accents”
Why does any of this matter?
• It helps with our accent and to understand why others' accents are like they are
• It's just interesting anyway
• It helps us understand one of the universal things that makes us human: our language ability
• It's useful for speech synthesis: http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/~spr/SVOX/svoxdemo/svoxdemo.html
Und jetzt:
Arbeitsblatt Woche 2