analysis: unhappiness

[Tom Givon]

Right on, Lise. And further, there is a well-known experimental 
technique called "semantic priming" that is admirably well suited for 
investigating whether when a language used hears "unhappiness", "happy" 
and "happiness" are activated ('come to mind'). This technique will 
probably not answer the question of the differential bracketing 
(un[happiness] vs. [unhappy]ness). And it is too rough to answer 
questions of directionality (does "unhappy" prime "happy" stronger than 
vice versa?). But it does tends to suggest that we don't store complex 
words in total disconnect from their parts, at least not as frequent 
adult users. And that phonological similarity (shared parts of words) 
has semantic consequences.  Cheers,  TG

==============


Lise Menn wrote:
> So we see an important phenomenon: Tacit knowledge really IS tacit, 
> and 'intuitions' are very poor guides to what our minds are doing when 
> we are using the patterns of our language as speakers/hearers.  
> Introspection cannot replace observation of actual usage and 
> psycholinguistic experiments; it can only act as a suggestion of where 
> to dig.  After all, we can't figure out vision or digestion by 
> thinking about how they feel, although we certainly have to account 
> for subjective feelings of contrast and indigestion. The same is true 
> for language,  mutatis mutandis.
>
> On Sep 8, 2010, at 9:26 AM, Johanna Rubba wrote:
>
>> One thing that consistently occurs in my intro linguistics classes is 
>> that at least half of my students do not analyze complex words the 
>> way a linguist would -- many would analyze "unhappiness" as "un" + 
>> "happiness." They make such analyses over and over. It makes one 
>> wonder, of course, about how much native-speaker intuition is in 
>> agreement with some linguistic analyses. I can *feel* that the 
>> analysis is [[un-happy]-ness], but, apparently, large numbers of 
>> native speakers cannot.
>>
>> Another thing I often find is that many students cannot locate either 
>> primary or (especially) secondary stress in words. This is very 
>> bizarre, considering that they produce the stresses correctly and 
>> hear them correctly in others' speech. So many are unsuccessful at 
>> this that I have stopped requiring them to find stress in words on 
>> tests. I give them tricks like singing the word and monitoring for 
>> the highest-pitched syllable, but the tricks don't work. That many 
>> students can't be tone-deaf.
>>
>> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
>> Professor, Linguistics
>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>> English Dept.
>> Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
>> San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>> Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
>> Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
>> Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
>> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
>> URL: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>>
>>
>>
>
> Lise Menn                      Home Office: 303-444-4274
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>
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> University of  Colorado
>
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>