assigned to the arguments by verb.This uniformity of theta assignment, a principle of Universal Grammar, dictates that the various thematic roles are always in their proper structural place in deep structure.
e.g. d-structure_was bitten the stick by the dog.s-structure the stick was bitten _by the dog.
11. Maxims of Conversation: speakers of all languages adhere to various cooperative principles for communicating sincerely called Grice’s Maxims.
Phonetics: the sound of languages 1. Phonetics: the sound of languages.
2. IPA: In 1888 members of the International Phonetic Association developed a phonetic alphabet to symbolize the sounds of all languages.The inventors of this International Phonetic Alphabet, knew that a phonetic alphabet should include just enough symbols to represent the fundamental sounds of all languages.Phonetic symbols are written in square brackets [ ] to distinguish them from ordinary letters.
3. Manner of Articulation: 1)Voiced and Voiceless Sounds; Sounds are voiceless when the vocal cords are apart and not vibrating. Voiceless
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sounds fall into two classes depending on the timing of the vocal cord closure, resulting in Unaspirated and Aspirated.2)When the air escapes through both the nose and the mouth, sounds produced this way are nasal sounds.In the opposite, it is oral sounds. 3)Stops 4) fricatives.
4. vowels: They differ according to the position of the tongue and lips, high, mid or low tongue.
high front central back rounded(前4) i boot u
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beet
I put U mid boat o
3 bet ^e Rosa ^ bore o low bomb a
e
bit
bait
butt
bat
5. Tense and Lax Vowels: The tense vowels occur in the words with a final, so-called silent e in the spelling, e.g., mate, mete, kite, cute. The lax vowels occur in the corresponding words without a silent e: mat, met, kit, cut, and the vowel in good.The lax vowels can not be placed in stressed open syllable.In each of these pairs, the lax vowel is shorter, lower, and slightly more centralized than the corresponding tense vowel.
The Sound Patterns of Language
1. Phonemes are what we have been calling the basic form of a sound and are sensed in your mind rather than spoken or heard. Allophonemes are called as each phoneme has associated with it one or more sounds. 2. A particular realization (pronunciation) of a phoneme is called a phone. Allophone：the collection of phones that are the realizations of the same
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phoneme are called the allophones of that phoneme.
3. A minimal pair :two words with different meanings that are identical except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in each word. 4. complementary distribution: the phones like vowel and nasalized vowel are said to complement each other or to be in complementary distribution. By and large, the allophones of a phoneme are in complementary
distribution
— never
occurring in
identical
environments.e.g. aspirated /p/and unaspirated /p/. The phones which are in complementary distribution, may not be allophones.e.g.[?] vs. [h]. Ⅰ.Distinctive Features of Phonemes
When a feature distinguishes one phoneme from another, hence one word from another, it is a distinctive feature or, equivalently, a phonemic feature, including voiced, continuant, and many others; When a feature value is predictable by rule for a certain class of sounds, the feature is a nondistinctive feature for that class.
Whether a phonological feature is distinctive or redundant is language specific. Some features like nasal may be distinctive for one class of sounds(consonants) but nondistinctive for a different class(vowels). Whether a phonological feature is distinctive or nondistinctive is language specific. Aspiration is distinctive feature in Tai and nondistinctive in English. Ⅱ.The Rules of Phonology
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1. assimilation rule is the one that makes neighboring segments more similar by duplicating a phonetic property. Two types of assimilation
? Progressive assimilation: cat, cats; book, booked ? Perseverative assimilation: Knife, knives; house, houses 2. dissimilation rules, in which a segment becomes less similar to another segment. In Latin a derivational suffix -alis was added to nouns to form adjectives. When the suffix was added to a noun that contained the liquid /l/, the suffix was changed to -aris; When these words came into English, they are shown as the adj. end in -al or -ar. e.g.annu-al, annul-ar;anecdot-al,angul-ar.
3. Feature-Changing Rules: In some cases a feature already present is changed, it is called feature-changing rules. The assimilation and dissimilation rules can be viewed as feature-changing rules.The addition of a feature is the other way in which features change.
1)The English vowel nasalization rule: means that in English aspirates voiceless stops occur at the beginning of a syllable. e.g. pit vs. compass. 2)A voiceless, non-continuant has [+aspirated] added to its feature matrix at the beginning of a syllable containing a stressed vowel with an optional intervening consonant. e.g. crib, clip, quip /k/.
4. Segment insertion and deletion：The process of inserting a consonant
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