Syntax

Question 1

Cookbook problem

Answer 1

“keywords” that provide information on greater; they give us an idea but we don’t find out any actual information

Question 2

Compositionality

Answer 2

heirarchal way of stringing words together, linguistic messages are interpreted, layer by layer, in a way that depends on their structure

Question 3

Syntax-directed translation

Answer 3

layered (recursive) structures of syntax allow us to communicate an infinity of meanings, using a few methods for building phrases with complex meanings out of phrases with simple ones

Question 4

Syntax-directed translation in ordinary language

Answer 4

Steel bar prices = (steel bar) + prices

Stone traffic barriers = stone + (traffic barriers)

Can be really confusing though;
Process control block base register value =
(((process control) block)((base register) value))

English noun compounds also suffer from semantic vagueness in the relations between the words
-Peanut Oil v Hair Oil (one’s made from the other, one’s for the other); Snow Shoe v Horse Shoe

Question 5

How do we reduce ambiguity?

Answer 5

special words or endings for making structural or semantic relationships among other words explicit (for, of, to, dealing with)

interpretation of word order (dung beetle v beetle dung)

patterns may vary from language to language

semantically-related words will tend to be closer together than semantically-unrelated words are; even when it’s not you can tell by the semantic relationship between words

Question 6

Broca’s Aphasia

Answer 6

Trouble speaking fluently from lesion in frontal lobe, comprehension intact but speaking sucks