LIN476H5 F 2024 Language Universals

LIN476H5 F 2024

Language Diversity and Language Universals

Homework Assignment 1

Due: Fr 09/20, by 11:59p

Submit your homework on Quercus. Neat typing is required.

To type IPA symbols, consider one of the following tools:

- Online IPA keyboards, e.g.https://ipa.typeit.org/full/

- Install an IPA keyboard on your computer: (supports Windows, Mac OS, Ubuntu Linux)

https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=UniIPAKeyboard

To draw nice trees, try out one of these tools.

- https://ironcreek.net/syntaxtree/

- https://mshang.ca/syntree/

Skills

1. A systematic summary of common inflectional morphological categories. You have seen that to be a good linguistic typologist, or just to be able to read, understand & present linguistic data effectively, you need to become good at glossing. One key skill in glossing is to be able to recognize inflectional morphology that a language has, and gloss them with the correct Leipzig-style. abbreviation.

This exercise helps you systematically review inflectional morphological categories and values that are commonly found in the world’s languages.

Read through section §6.2 of the Introducing Morphology textbook (by Rochelle Lieber, posted on Quercus, under “Modules > Course Materials”), which gives quite a comprehensive overview of common inflectional categories, as well as the values that each inflectional category commonly takes.

(Notice the difference between the NAME of an inflectional category [e.g “number”], and the VALUES that the inflectional category can take [e.g. “number” may be able to take the values {singular, plural, dual}, etc.]!)

Make a list of all the inflectional categories that Lieber reviews.

For each inflectional category, name it, and then list the values it can take (spell them out in full: e.g. singular).

For each value, find and list its Leipzig-style abbreviation in the Velupillai textbook (you know where to find the list!)

2. Personal reflection. Which of the above inflectional categories did you…

… find helpful to review (i.e.you had already started to not remember them)? What had you forgotten and refreshed this time around?

… read about for the first time 代 写LIN476H5 F 2024 Language Universals (i.e.you had not encountered them before, either in your morphology course, or elsewhere)?

It goes without saying, but this question is more for you to check your own understanding & memory. So just be honest. You get the points for including a detailed reflection.

3. Presenting & formatting glossed linguistic examples. For future assignments, you will

frequently need to present glossed linguistic examples typed (i.e. no screenshots/pictures/hand- written scribbles). You may have wondered how to type these glossed examples in an efficient way.

I made avery short videoon how I like to do it in Microsoft Word.

Watch the video, and then:

Present the Burmese and the Tagalog example sentencesfrom Lecture 3 in the well-formatted way shown in the video.

Looking at the glosses to these two example sentences: explain briefly what it means to use a period “.”, an equal-sign “=”, and angle brackets “<>”, in the glosses to these examples.

To answer this question, consult the following parts of the Leipzig Glossing Rules (link on Quercus):

- Rule #4 (the main part, not the optional parts)

- Rule #2

- Rule #9

Research

1. Your research language. Present the basic information on your research language. Write an introduction (not a list of bullet points—an introduction!). In it, tell your reader:

- The name(s) of your research language.

Pay special attention to see if there are multiple names used for your language; if applicable, this information would usually be included in the introductory chapter of a reference grammar.

- Its genetic affiliation: include the larger language family and the immediate subgroup, if available. For instance: English is a language under the Germanic subgroup of the Indo-European family.

- Its areal distribution

- Its vitality

- Your main sources for all of this information: (a) the primary reference grammar, and (b) Glottolog &

Ethnologue

For all of this, consult your reference grammar, but also consult Glottolog and Ethnologue (both posted on Quercus). Clearly indicate, within-line citations, which information comes from which source.