Phonetics
· sound types: vowels, semivowels, nasals, stops
· vocal tract: lips, tongue height, points of articulation
· spectra: formants, gaps, transitional effects
Phonological Context
· indefinite/implausible/illogical/irregular
· also: cat/s/, dog/z/, fox/iz/, drop/t/, rub/d/, add/id/
· s, g and t in sign/design/designate/signature
· /s/ ® /sh/ : racial, spatial, erasure; also: seizure, gradual
· short stressed antepenult: natural, definitive, provocative
Orthography (spelling)
· doubled consonants : rubbing, hidden, bagged, crystallize
· final y --> i / C_V : marriage, reliable, crazier, denied, vilify
· final e --> / _V : realization, storage, whiten, privatize, seizure
Morphology
· affixes: prefix, suffix, others, possibly multiple (Swahili)
· inflectional
· derivational: lighten, lightness, demonize, worker, usually
Syntax
· specifying all and only the sentences of a language
· what is in touch (-tax) with (syn-) what
· word-order, grouping and CFGs
· case and free word-order
· features and agreement: case, gender, number, person
· major/open categories and their phrases
· complement structures and subcategorization
· X-bar: modifiers, complements, specifiers
· empty nodes
· long-distance dependencies
· function words
Semantics
· lookup and combine
· lexical ambiguity
· synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms
· type hierarchies for nouns and verbs
· modification
· predicates and arguments
· compositionality and piggybacking on syntax
· quantification, negation and scope
· lambda notation
Discourse
· anaphoric reference across sentences
· topic structure
· rhetorical structure: relations among sentences
· grounding, turn-taking
Pragmatics
· maxims: true, relevant, clear, just enough
· indirectness: do you know the time? it’s cold in here.
· style/register
· speech acts: I… order you to, promise to, second it