Language Overflow

« first day (312 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3217 days later) »

Damkerng T.

20:00

Phonetics is acoustic phenomena relating to language, phonology is linguistic phenomena relating to sounds.

(I tried to put it succinctly.)

Anonymous

Hmm, maybe physical rather than acoustic.

Damkerng T.

I like that!

Anonymous

Jan 7 at 15:22, by snailboat

@DamkerngT. Phonetics is divided broadly into three fields: articulatory phonetics, how something is physically pronounced; acoustic phonetics, the measurement and analysis of the sound waves produced in human speech; and auditory phonetics, the sounds we hear.

Anonymous

Not all articulatory gestures result in physical sound, and if they do, that sound isn't always audible.

Damkerng T.

Inaudible sound sounds self-contradict!

Anonymous

20:06

Well, we have to define audible, then.

Anonymous

When a hamster makes a sound at a frequency far higher than a human can hear, it's audible to other hamsters, but it's not audible to a human being.

Anonymous

An audible sound is what you're capable of hearing.

Damkerng T.

Oh, true!

Anonymous

When we make an MP3, we add lots of noise at frequencies where, ideally, it's physically impossible to hear due to masking. This noise is supposed to be inaudible.

Anonymous

But you can still measure it acoustically.

Anonymous

20:13

Phonetics relates everything to some sort of physical reality. Phonology is more theoretical, and it's supposed to match up with how native speakers conceptualize the sounds of a language.

Damkerng T.

It seems like phonology centers around phonemes.

Anonymous

Yeah. So we say that pin, spin, and up all have the same /p/ sound (phoneme) at the psychological level, but physically they're three different sounds.

Anonymous

I'm trying to think of how I would put it concisely in my own words.

Anonymous

It's hard, though.

Anonymous

20:50

@DamkerngT. I find a lot of syntax trees used in generative grammar to be much harder to understand than syntax trees used in informal descriptive grammars like CGEL.

Anonymous

I have some complaints about CGEL, though, and one of those is that there are very few syntax trees.

Damkerng T.

Hah!

Anonymous

Sometimes I think it's unclear how they'd diagram a construction they've discussed.

Damkerng T.

I didn't expect many trees in CGEL.

Anonymous

How about bracketing?

Anonymous

20:52

Bracketing is just a notational alternative to using syntax trees, really.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think I like bracketing better. It's more compact.

Anonymous

It can be harder to understand, though.

Anonymous

It depends on how much structure you want to show.

Anonymous

Bracketing only works well if you're showing a very small amount of structure.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

20:53

If you bracket every constituent, it ends up being kind of a mess.

Anonymous

Of course, you can use trees without breaking everything down, too.

Anonymous

Trees allow you to show some more complicated structures, too, that bracketing doesn't really work for.

Damkerng T.

I think I like fish-bone trees better than upside-down trees, like those in sentence diagramming.

Anonymous

Er.

Anonymous

You mean like the ones they used to use many years ago, but are now abandoned by linguists? :-)

Damkerng T.

20:56

I'm not even sure if it's ever been used by linguists!

Anonymous

I assume you're referring to Reed–Kellogg diagrams.

Damkerng T.

Ah, yes! I vaguely remember their names.

Anonymous

Syntax trees are very useful, though, for showing that sentences aren't just a linear pile of words.

Anonymous

Linearly adjacent words may be quite distant from one another syntactically!

Anonymous

The Reed–Kellogg system was great for what it was back in the 1800s :-)

Anonymous

21:00

Oh!

Anonymous

An opportunity for one of my favorite quotes:

Anonymous

in English Language Learners, Apr 6 '15 at 14:22, by snailboat

> I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences. — Gertrude Stein

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. One of the neat things about CGEL's trees is that they show both category and function.

Anonymous

Most syntax trees don't do that.

Damkerng T.

21:02

In R&K, the PoS or function can be deduced from the shape of the branch, I think.

It could become a nightmare easily, though.

Anonymous

Well, Reed–Kellogg diagrams aren't really useful for analyzing language . . .

Damkerng T.

I guess it's also a nightmare either way, R&K or the syntax tree.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Wow! That tree really is much harder to read than a modern tree.

Anonymous

What was the original sentence?

Damkerng T.

Oh, really?

Anonymous

21:04

Well, syntax trees are generally pretty easy to read.

Damkerng T.

It's the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

Anonymous

Unless they're of the generative sort with lots of weird transformations going on . . .

Damkerng T.

> When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Anonymous

I think the main feature that reduces cognitive load with a more standard syntax tree is that the sentence still reads from left to right.

Anonymous

It doesn't branch out in random directions.

Damkerng T.

21:10

nods

Catija

Wow... that's a nice bonus... just got a gold badge on ELL... and it's one I've heard people say is really hard to get, too.

Anonymous

Which one?

Catija

Populist... there's only six awarded on the site so far.

Damkerng T.

Congrats!

Catija

Amusingly, one of the other ones awarded went to a question where I have the accepted answer.... but I still think my answer is better.

Anonymous

21:20

@DamkerngT. Yeah, that would be a giant tree, though.

Anonymous

I started treeing it, but I got too lazy to finish :-)

Mambo

Hi all

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Aww

Hi!

Anonymous

But at least with a more standard syntax tree, you'd be able to read the sentence from left-to-right and see how things are grouped together.

Mambo

I would like to learn French

Damkerng T.

21:28

I think I'm worst at French in this room.

Mambo

I think I am in the wrong room

Anonymous

So you'd get the initial adjunct [ when . . . it becomes necessary for . . . to . . . and to . . . ], then the main clause [ a decent respect . . . requires that . . . ], and then you can look closer to see how those parts are broken down, and so on.

Anonymous