analysis: unhappiness

[A. Katz]

Richard,

What you just pointed out -- that speaker sensitivity to language 
structure varies from individual to individual and can be affected by 
experience and training -- goes toward an even more fundamental point: 
that language structure exists separate and apart from how individual 
speakers process it.



    --Aya


On Thu, 9 Sep 2010, Richard Hudson wrote:

> This discussion about the role of native-speaker intuition treats all native 
> speakers and all levels of language equally. And yet we all agree with Joanna 
> when she says "I can *feel* that the analysis is [[un-happy]-ness], but, 
> apparently, large numbers of native speakers cannot. " Why? Certainly not 
> because we've got psycholinguistic evidence on this particular word. Isn't it 
> something to do with maturity and training for the speakers, and 
> meaningfulness for the levels?
>
> Think of that classic 1979 experiment by the Gleitmans that found massive 
> differences in sensitivity to language structure with both age and education, 
> so that /eat house bird/ is interpreted as 'a house-bird who is very eat' by 
> students with a PhD (but not in linguistics) but as 'everybody is eating up 
> their pet birds' by clerical staff. In this case, as in the other examples 
> they tried, the more educated were right (by our standards) and the less 
> educated were wrong. They also found big differences in reliability from 
> level to level, with semantic judgements easiest and most reliable and 
> phonological judgements least reliable, and syntax in between. That's 
> presumably because ordinary speakers spend most of their time grappling with 
> meaning ('Look after the sense and the sounds will look after themselves', as 
> someone said to Alice in Wonderland).
>
> We linguists can add a further layer of explanation to the judgements, but 
> some judgements do seem to be more reliable than others. And if we have to 
> wait for psycholinguistic evidence for every detailed analysis we make, our 
> whole discipline will immediately grind to a halt. Like it or not, native 
> speaker judgements are what put us linguists ahead of the rest in handling 
> fine detail. Imagine writing the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language 
> (or the OED) without using native speaker judgements.
>
> Best wishes,  Dick Hudson
>
>
> Richard Hudson www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
>
> On 09/09/2010 02:20, Johanna Rubba wrote:
>> The reason I make much of my students' disagreements with linguists' 
>> analyses is that, at least as I recall from my graduate education, 
>> native-speaker intuitions were routinely used in defense of analyses of 
>> sentence structure. I agree completely with Lise that introspection alone 
>> is not sufficient for defending an analysis.
>> 
>> I never meant to suggest that my students store complex words disconnected 
>> from their component parts. Such a notion would be bizarre for a 
>> practitioner of Cognitive Grammar. Plus, the behavior I described doesn't 
>> contradict network connections; it challenges the usefulness of NS 
>> intuitions, which would, in turn, challenge analyses defended based on 
>> same. It's odd that, in some cases, students' tacit knowledge can be 
>> brought to consciousness, and in other cases not.
>> 
>> It seems clear that context (including priming) affects a language-user's 
>> analysis. Certainly, many expressions that sound odd out of context sound 
>> perfectly fine in a suitable context.
>> 
>> Jo
>> 
>> On Sep 8, 2010, at 6:03 PM, Tom Givon wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 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
>>> 1625 Mariposa Ave    Fax: 303-413-0017
>>> Boulder CO 80302
>>> http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/index.html
>>> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
>>> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
>>> University of  Colorado
>>> 
>>> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>>> Fellow, Linguistic Society of America
>>> 
>>> Campus Mail Address:
>>> UCB 594, Institute for Cognitive Science
>>> 
>>> Campus Physical Address:
>>> CINC 234
>>> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Professor, Linguistics
>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>> English Department
>> California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
>> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
>> Tel.: 805.756.2184
>> Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
>> Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
>> URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>