US 3 • DAVID G. KAY • UC IRVINE • SPRING 2018

Assignments

The timing of these assignments is somewhat flexible, depending on exactly what we talk about in class.

Week 2:

• Read Chapters 00 and 01 of the Linguistics Wikibook [Stabler 1 and 11]. Feel free to follow up on Piazza with questions and comments. But note that we'll spend time in class next week talking about phonetics, the subject of Chapter 01. Also, the authors may address or emphasize things that just aren't important for what we're doing. That means you shouldn't worry if small passages aren't crystal clear; don't spend a lot of time on those passages and we can discuss on Piazza or in class whether it's important to understand them further.
• There's no written assignment for this week.

Week 3:

• Read Chapters 02 and 03 of the Linguistics Wikibook [Stabler 12/13 and 2]. These are the topics we'll get to after phonetics.
• Choose a language you know, other than English. It doesn't matter how well you know it. Let's call it Language X. Write down three different consonant sounds (of the sort we talked about in class) that Language X has but English doesn't have. For each sound, give an example of a word or phrase in Language X that contains the sound and try to describe the sound in the articulatory phonetics terms we covered in class. (Typically that woud include a point of articulation, like "bilabial" or "palatal", and a manner of articulation, like "voiced stop" or "voiceless fricative." So the sound [z] is an alveolar voiced fricative.)
• Take a look at this animated pronunciation head that illustrates the various points of articulation.

Week 4:

• Read Chapter 04 of the Linguistics Wikibook. There's another free linguistics text that you might prefer; it's Lecture Notes: Linguistics by Edward Stabler. I've indicated the corresponding chapters above; the chapters that correspond for this week are 3 through 7. All these readings should provide some background for what we do in class; you should look over the indicated chapters in at least one of the texts, but you should not feel obligated to read them in great detail.
• There's no written assignment for this week.

Week 5:

• There's nothing additional to read for this week; use the opportunity to catch up (or study for your midterms).
• You may do the written part of this assignment by yourself; you may also do it with one or two partners because you may learn something more by discussing the problems. If you work with partners, turn in one paper copy with everyone's name at the top. If there are four of you, split into two groups of two.

  Here is a phrase-structure grammar like the one we looked at in class. It describes an extremely limited subset of English. Each line is a "rewrite rule"—it says that the item to the left of the arrow can be rewritten as the item(s) to the right of the arrow. Thus, the first line says that S (for "sentence") can be rewritten as NP (for "noun phrase") followed by VP (for "verb phrase"). The vertical bar means "or" (so the last line says that V can become "ate" or "chased" or "saw". (We use the typewriter font to indicate "terminal symbols" that could occur in the language as part of the final sentence (i.e., that can't be rewritten because they don't occur on the left side of any grammar rule).)
  S —> NP VP
  NP —> Art N
  VP —> V NP
  Art —> a | the | this | that
  N —> cat | dog | mouse
  V —> ate | chased | saw

  (a) Write three varied sentences that this grammar produces. (That is, start with S and keep rewriting symbols, according to the grammar's rewrite rules, until all you have are "terminal symbols" (English words) that can't be rewritten any further. This isn't the same as just assembling sentences out of the listed words.)

  (b) Write two Engish sentences that this grammar does not produce, but that it could produce if the definitions of Art, N, and V were expanded. (That is, come up with sentences that don't require any structural change to the grammar, but just require new words in the existing categories.)

  (c) Write two English sentences that this grammar could not produce even if all the words in the sentence were included in the definitions of Art, N, and V.

  (d) Does this grammar really describe a subset of English? That is, is every sentence it can generate acceptable to most English speakers? If it can generate any sentences that are not part of English, then the grammar does not describe a subset of English; if you think this is the case, give an example of such a sentence.

  The grammar above is finite. We could list all the possible sentences in the language it describes. With one small addition, the grammar below is infinite (as all natural languages are infinite):

  S —> NP VP
  NP —> Art N | NP Conj NP
  VP —> V NP
  Art —> a | the | this | that
  Conj —> and | or
  N —> cat | dog | mouse
  V —> ate | chased | saw

  (e) Write two sentences that this grammar produces but the first grammar doesn't (which means you'll use the second alternative for NP at least once).

Week 6:

• There's nothing additional to read for this week; use the opportunity to catch up (or study for your midterms).
• "I saw the man in the park with a telescope." That sentence is ambiguous. It could mean, "I viewed the man through the telescope while I was in the park"; it could also mean, "I viewed the man while I was in the park that has a telescope" [i.e, an observatory]. List at least two additional, distinct meanings of this sentence (there are at least a dozen). Consider each meaning you come up with carefully: Be sure it's really a meaning of the sentence and be sure you write it down clearly and unambiguously so it won't be confused with other meanings.
  

Week 7:

• Take a look at these items:
• The Wikipedia chart, "Distribution of languages in the world"
• North American English Dialects page (just browse around)
• George Booth's cartoon "Ip Gissa Gul" from The New Yorker (January 20, 1975). Try to "translate" what the cavemen say into normal English. (If the link doesn't work, just Google "Ip Gissa Gul.")
• Take the New York Times American Dialect Quiz. If possible, print out the final page ("Your map") or at least write down which three cities it thinks match your linguistic background. Also write down whether you think the result is accurate or surprising (and if surprising, feel free to take a guess about why). I doubt this quiz was designed for people whose first language isn't English, but it will still be interesting to see what it produces in that case. Put your name on it and turn it in.

Week 8:

• Read Chapter 10 of the Linguistics Wikibook.
• When you speak to a professor in class or in office hours, you speak in a certain way: You use certain words, certain grammatical structures, and so on. Write down at least one other, different situation in which you speak a different kind of English—different vocabulary, different grammar, perhaps different pronunciation, even if it's not very different—and give at least two examples of something you'd say differently in the two situations.

Week 9:

• Work on the Cryptography Group Exercise I handed out. If you solve it with classmates, turn in just one page with each person's name on it.