Homework 1

Posted Tuesday September 1st; electronic submission due by class time on Tuesday September 8th.

The goal of this assignment is:

• To find out a little about you, to know about your background and why you are taking this course.
• To give you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with sending email and finding course information on this Web site.
• To review some of the ideas discussed in class and in the readings.

Although it will normally be ok to submit your assignment either in hard copy or electronically, at least parts A-D of this assignment must be sent by email to the leader of your discussion section (not sure who, or what his email address is? Consult the "Instructors" page by clicking on the navigation bar on the left; not sure what number your discussion section is? Consult the "Schedule" page). Part E can be handed in as hardcopy if you prefer.

A. Please let us know the following things about yourself

1. Name
2. Year (freshman, sophomore etc.)
3. Major (known or expected)
4. Why are you taking this course, and what do you aim to get out of a course in linguistics?
5. What is/are your native language(s)? Where did you grow up (e.g., Mexico City, Wilmington, Beijing)?
6. When you speak English, do you think your voice makes it possible for somebody to guess where you are from? Are there any aspects of your speech that you think are associated with a specific region? [Give details.]
7. Have you studied any other languages in the past? Which languages? How confident are you in speaking or understanding these languages?

B. Now some questions about you and computers - given the extensive use of electronic tools and resources in this course, this information will be very useful to us in organizing the course:

1. Do you mostly work with a computer in your home/dorm or with a computer at one of the university computing sites?
2. If you mostly use a computer in your home/dorm, do you have network access (email, world wide web)?
3. What platform(s) are you familiar with (e.g. Mac, Windows95, Unix)
4. What is your email address?
5. Are you an experienced/regular email user, or are you a relative newcomer?
6. Are you an experienced/regular user of the World Wide Web, or are you a relative newcomer?
7. Are you experienced in using World Wide Web search engines to look for information (e.g. AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos)?

C. This is the part where you get to set a challenge for us!

• Find one question about language, languages, or linguistics for the instructor and TA to answer. Although you need not know the answer to this question, it should be something for which an answer should be feasibly findable. Feel free to use the course books or the resources provided with Homework 2 to help you come up with a question.
• We will answer as many of the questions as we can, and in class on Thursday September 10th we will show how we went about finding the answers. This will be useful to you when you are faced with a similar challenge in Homework 2.
• There will be a (small) prize for the best question!
• Here are some answers to the questions (under construction).

D. And while we're asking...

• The researchers in the Language Processing Laboratory are often looking for volunteer as participants in their studies of how people understand spoken and written language. A typical study lasts for about an hour, and involves reading a number of sentences displayed on a computer screen and answering questions about the sentences. No computer skills required. Subjects are paid $8/hour for participation. If you are interested in participating in a study, please indicate this in your email. In saying that you're interested in this you are not making any firm committment - we're just finding out who is interested in being contacted about this. Participating in an experiment takes about 1 hour, and new experiments are run once or twice per semester.

E. Now for some linguistics! Please complete the following:

1. Many children are reported to have "language problems" when they enter school. One thing that a teacher sometimes needs to do is try to figure out what this language problem is, if indeed there is a problem at all. Sometimes the problem is nothing more than the fact that the child is not using the most prestigious variety of English.
   Imagine that you are a teacher, and a colleage has suggested to you that one of the 6-year olds in your class has a language problem. You want to figure out whether this child really has a language problem due to brain damage (aphasia) or genetic impairment (specific language impairment), or whether the child just doesn't talk the way your colleague would prefer. How might you figure this out - what kinds of clues in the child's language might make you reach one conclusion or the other? [Tip: non-standard English is discussed in Chapter 12 of Pinker's book; language impairments are discussed in chapter 2].
   
2. Answer Exercise 7 on pp.30-31 of Fromkin & Rodman's textbook.
   [Tip: you may find it useful to look at the discussion of human vs. animal communication systems on pp.22-26.]
   
   [1/9/98: Since there are reports that the bookstore is temporarily out of copies of Fromkin & Rodman's book, (i) the text of question 7 is given here, (ii) some copies of pp.22-26 will be brought to class on Thursday 9/3.]
   "A wolf is able to express subtle gradations of emotion by different positions of the ears, the lips, and the tail. There are eleven postures of the tail that express such emotions as self-confidence, confident threat, lack of tension, uncertain threat, depression, defensiveness, active submission, and complete submission. This system seems to be complex. Suppose there were a thousand different emotions that the wolf could express in this way. Would you then say that a wolf had a language similar to a human's? If not, why not?"
   
3. For the boldface sentences below, state whether the sentence is grammatical for you (in the descriptive sense, not in the sense of prescriptive grammar). For those boldface sentences that you do not find acceptable, give a brief explanation of what you think is the problem with the sentence. The non-boldface sentences are related to the boldface sentences, and are provided to help you figure out what might be the problem. Note that it is not helpful to just write that a sentence "doesn't make sense" - you need to give a more specific reason.
   
   a. Robin made the sheriff go.
   b. Robin made the sheriff to go.
   c. Robin forced the sheriff go.
   d. Robin forced the sheriff to go.
   
   e. Wallace likes Gromit.
   f. Gromit is liked by Wallace.
   g. Maurice resembles Harold.
   h. Harold is resembled by Maurice.
   
   i. Kevin saw Amy with Jennifer in the library.
   j. Who did Kevin see Amy with in the library?
   k. Kevin saw Amy and Jennifer in the library.
   l. Who did Kevin see Amy and in the library?
   
   m. Eric looked up the number.
   n. Eric looked the number up.
   o. Eric looked up it.
   p. Eric looked it up.
   
   [Attribution: this exercise is an adaptation of an exercise on pp.29-30 of Fromkin & Rodman's textbook.]