I found the discussions of the various writing systems extremely interesting. I especially enjoyed Leping's explanation of the Chinese writing system because it gave me some insight on what seems to be such a mysterious language, and I say this even after having studied Chinese for a year.
The explanation of the quiz at the end of class was very useful. I have been struggling somewhat with distinguishing phonemes from allophones by using minimal pairs but the in class discussion really shed some light on this topic. I have since gone back and looked over the quiz and felt a bit closer in understanding where I went wrong, although I will need to review this material again before I feel entirely confident with it.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Finegan Chapter 2: Lexicon and Morphology
This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what it actually means to "know a word." It addresses the similarities between the "mental lexicon," which is the brain's storage place for language, and a typical desktop dictionary. I found this comparison interesting and useful because it gives me a concrete analogy to refer to when thinking of how the brain stores and retrieves the various pieces of information necessary for language use.
After this brief introduction, the chapter begins discussing the various lexical categories (parts of speech) and how to distinguish these categories from one another. It starts out basic, with an overview of nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, and so on, and then illustrates how various lexical categories can modify others. I found this portion especially useful because it gives an example of how languages function in an intrinsically logical and predictable fashion, and I believe it will be applicable in many different situations where linguistic analysis is necessary.
After the discussion of lexical categories, the text presents a definition of "morphemes" including what a morpheme is, the differences between free and bound morphemes (free morphemes can stand alone, bound must be attached to another word), how bound morphemes can change the lexical categories of various words, and the organization of morphemes within words. Regarding the last category, I found it interesting that the Japanese and Tagalog languages can have "infixes" which are affixes that occurs between two morphemes to change the meaning of a word. This is unique because most other languages, English included, uses only prefixes and suffixes which makes the notion of inserting an affix into the middle of a word seem extremely foreign
After this brief introduction, the chapter begins discussing the various lexical categories (parts of speech) and how to distinguish these categories from one another. It starts out basic, with an overview of nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, and so on, and then illustrates how various lexical categories can modify others. I found this portion especially useful because it gives an example of how languages function in an intrinsically logical and predictable fashion, and I believe it will be applicable in many different situations where linguistic analysis is necessary.
After the discussion of lexical categories, the text presents a definition of "morphemes" including what a morpheme is, the differences between free and bound morphemes (free morphemes can stand alone, bound must be attached to another word), how bound morphemes can change the lexical categories of various words, and the organization of morphemes within words. Regarding the last category, I found it interesting that the Japanese and Tagalog languages can have "infixes" which are affixes that occurs between two morphemes to change the meaning of a word. This is unique because most other languages, English included, uses only prefixes and suffixes which makes the notion of inserting an affix into the middle of a word seem extremely foreign
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)