Grice's Maxims (May 3, 2012)

On May 3rd, we will be taking a closer look at Grice's Maxims. We will also be looking for examples of implicature: Language Files 7.2.2 ~ 7.3.6.

Be sure to keep a pure text copy of your Romance Fiction Corpus text: that's why I recommended using NoteTab Light and IntelliComplete Server (both are free software) for typing up your assignment. Keep your text copy on a USB key or in the cloud (email).

Romance Fiction Mini-Corpus

In the final weeks of our course, we will be looking at one small part of computational linguistics, corpus linguistics. In corpus linguistics, we work with corpora (plural of corpus), so each of you will help to compile a mini-corpus of romantic fiction texts. Find the appropriate page in our blog and enter the text of your story. We will be using this genre-specific corpus to learn how CL can help us study English.

Easier Midterm Coverage

To make your job easier, the midterm will only cover Morphology and Syntax. You will be tested on Semantics when we have finished covering Pragmatics.

Linguistics Midterm: Syntax Section

This section will help you draw or interpret tree structure diagrams.
Be sure to do the exercises in Topics 2 and 4.

Syntax Topics	Subtopic List
1	Introduction	http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/phrases/phrases.htm
2	&The Basic Structure of a Phrase
3	More Phrase Types; Noun Phrase (NP); Verb Phrase (VP)
4	&Adjective Phrase (AP); Adverb Phrase (AdvP); Prepositional Phrase (PP)
5	Phrases within Phrases

Google Translate: Simplified to Traditional

If you have trouble reading simplified Chinese characters, please remember that Google Translate can work from English to Chinese but also from Simplified to Traditional:

Linguistics Midterm: Morphology Section

We will be using the following IGE pages to review basic concepts of grammar (the same topics we have covered in the Morphology and Syntax chapters of Language Files, 10th edition). This should not be considered "new" material. You should already have studied almost all of this during your first year of college (or even in junior high school). The pages that appear below give you a brief review.

Internet Grammar of English, Chinese version

The Internet Grammar of English (IGE), is available in a  Chinese version written by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Internet Grammar of English, The -- Introduction

When you study difficult topics, reading a different explanation can sometimes be very helpful. The Internet Grammar of English (IGE) provides this sort of help. IGE gives you a slightly different explanation of phrase structure rules in English. It also gives you a few exercises to help you practice.

Start with the introduction. Pay special attention to the bottom half of this page:

(1) How the grammar is organized (= the topics and their sequence)

and

(2) The conventions they use (special ways of writing words and what they mean)