Introduction to Linguistics
                 MarcusKracht
             Department of Linguistics, UCLA
                3125CampbellHall
                450Hilgard Avenue
              LosAngeles, CA 90095–1543
               kracht@humnet.ucla.edu
            2                            Contents
            Contents
            Lecture 1: Introduction ................................................. 3
            Lecture 2: Phonetics...................................................12
            Lecture 3: Phonology I.................................................24
            Lecture 4: Phonology II................................................41
            Lecture 5: Phonology III...............................................55
            Lecture 6: Phonology IV...............................................66
            Lecture 7: Morphology I...............................................79
            Lecture 8: Syntax I .................................................... 86
            Lecture 9: Syntax II ................................................... 98
            Lecture 10: Syntax III ................................................ 109
            Lecture 11: Syntax IV ................................................ 119
            Lecture 12: Syntax V ................................................. 134
            Lecture 13: Morphology II............................................144
            Lecture 14: Semantics I...............................................154
            Lecture 15: Semantics II..............................................160
            Lecture 16: Semantics III.............................................168
            Lecture 17: Semantics IV ............................................. 177
            Lecture 18: Semantics V..............................................186
            Lecture 19: Language Families and History of Languages .............. 194
        Lecture 1: Introduction
           Languages are sets of signs. Signs combine an exponent (a sequence
           of letters or sounds) with a meaning. Grammars are ways to generate
           signs from more basic signs. Signs combine a form and a meaning,
           andtheyareidenticalwithneithertheirexponentnorwiththeirmean-
           ing.
        Before we start. I have tried to be as explicit as I could in preparing these notes.
        You will find that some of the technicalities are demanding at first sight. Do
        not panic! You are not expected to master these technicalities right away. The
        technical character is basically due to my desire to be as explicit and detailed as
        possible. For some of you this might actually be helpful. If you are not among
        themyoumaywanttoreadsomeotherbookontheside(whichIencourageyouto
        doanyway). However,linguisticsisgettingincreasinglyformalandmathematical,
        and you are well advised to get used to this style of doing science. So, if you do
        not understand right away what I am saying, you will simply have to go over it
        again and again. And keep asking questions! New words and technical terms
        that are used for the first time are typed in bold-face. If you are supposed to
        know what they mean, a definition will be given right away. The definition is
        valid throughout the entire course, but be aware of the fact that other people might
        define things differently. This applies when you read other books, for example.
        Youshould beware of possible discrepancies in terminology. If you are not given
        a definition elsewhere, be cautious. If you are given a different definition it does
        not mean that the other books get it wrong. The symbol  in the margin signals
        some material that is difficult, and optional. Such passages are put in for those
        whowanttogetaperfect understanding of the material; but they are not requried
        knowledge.
                                    (End of note)
          Language is a means to communicate, it is a semiotic system. By that we
        simply mean that it is a set of signs. Its A sign is a pair consisting—in the words
        of Ferdinand de Saussure—of a signifier and a signified. We prefer to call the
        signifier the exponent and the signified the meaning. For example, in English the
        string /dog/ is a signifier, and its signified is, say, doghood, or the set of all dogs.
        (I use the slashes to enclose concrete signifiers, in this case sequences of letters.)
        Sign systems are ubiquitous: clocks, road signs, pictograms—they all are parts of
            4                      Lecture 1: Introduction
            sign systems. Language differs from them only in its complexity. This explains
            why language signs have much more internal structure than ordinary signs. For
            notice that language allows to express virtually every thought that we have, and
            the number of signs that we can produce is literally endless. Although one may
            find it debatable whether or not language is actually infinite, it is clear that we
            are able to understand utterances that we have never heard before. Every year,
            hundreds of thousands of books appear, and clearly each of them is new. If it
            were the same as a previously published book this would be considered a breach
            of copyright! However, no native speaker of the language experiences trouble
            understanding them (apart from technical books).
             It might be far fetched, though, to speak of an entire book as a sign. But
            nothing speaks against that. Linguists mostly study only signs that consist of just
            one sentence. And this is what we shall do here, too. However, texts are certainly
            more than a sequence of sentences, and the study of discourse (which includes
            texts and dialogs) is certainly a very vital one. Unfortunately, even sentences are
            so complicated that it will take all our time to study them. The methods, however,
            shall be useful for discourse analysis as well.
             In linguistics, language signs are constituted of four different levels, not just
            two: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Semantics deals with
            the meanings (what is signified), while the other three are all concerned with the
            exponent. At the lowest level we find that everything is composed from a small
            set of sounds, or—when we write—of letters. (Chinese is exceptional in that the
            alphabet consists of around 50,000 ‘letters’, but each sign stands for a syllable—a
            sequence of sounds, not just a single one.) With some exceptions (for example
            tone and intonation) every utterance can be seen as a sequence of sounds. For
            example, /dog/ consists of three letters (and three sounds): /d/, /o/ and /g/. In
            order not to confuse sounds (and sound sequences) with letters we denote the
            sounds by enclosing them in square brackets. So, the sounds that make up [dog]
            are [d], [o] and [g], in that order. What is important to note here is that sounds
            by themselves in general have no meaning. The decomposition into sounds has
            no counterpart in the semantics. Just as every signifier can be decomposed into
            sounds, it can also be decomposed into words. In written language we can spot the
            words by looking for minimal parts of texts enclosed by blanks (or punctuation
            marks). In spoken language the definition of word becomes very tricky. The
            part of linguistics that deals with how words are put together into sentences is
            called syntax. On the other hand, words are not the smallest meaningful units of