LING 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Word Formation
Document Summary
Ambiguity: eg. unlockable, eg. student film series. To explain ambiguity, we assume that our tacit linguistic knowledge contains morphological rules (rules of word formation). Ambiguity of larger linguistic units: they also exhibit ambiguity. Old cats and plants (cid:28679)(cid:28664)(cid:28673)(cid:28663) (cid:28679)(cid:28674) (cid:28661)(cid:28674)(cid:28677)(cid:28664) y(cid:28674)(cid:28680) (cid:28660)(cid:28665)(cid:28679)(cid:28664)(cid:28677) y(cid:28674)(cid:28680)"(cid:28681)(cid:28664) (cid:28667)(cid:28660)(cid:28663) (cid:28679)(cid:28667)(cid:28664)(cid:28672) (cid:28665)(cid:28674)(cid:28677) (cid:28678)(cid:28674)(cid:28672)(cid:28664) (cid:28679)(cid:28668)(cid:28672)(cid:28664)(cid:28609) To explain this ambiguity, we assume that our tacit linguistic knowledge also contains syntactic rules: rules that put words together to form larger linguistics units. Syntax: part of the course is concerned with the nature of these rules. As we see, some word-formation rules are recursive, but some are not. Eg. (n-n n) is recursive; (npl-nsg+s) is recursive; (n-n+ness): it is recursive in some languages, but not english; (n-a+ness): it is not recursive. Recursion and ambiguity in units larger than words: For such sentences, we can continue to add words according to the syntax rule.
