Linguistics 101H: Introduction to Linguistics (Honors)
UNC-Chapel Hill Linguistics
Fall 2025
Elliott Moreton

Week 15, 2025.11.25.Tu

Topics: Language relatedness.

Class:

• Discuss HW 14, using common vs. rare historical changes
• Finish Proto-Central-Pacific problem from last time
• What counts as evidence that two languages are related?
  • Unconvincing evidence: Ancient Greek and Hawaiian (from Millar & Trask 2007; "Comparative Method").
  • Unconvincing evidence: Japanese and English (same HO)
  • Convincing evidence: "Germanic Syndrome" HO

Assignment for 12/02 Tu: Read over the final-exam syllabus (HO) and come prepared with review questions.

Week 14, 2025.11.20.Th

Topics: Comparative reconstruction.

Class:

• Go over Mbabaram problem. (Phonetic plausibility? Relative chronology?)
• In-class problem on Proto-Peninsular-Spanish.
• What did we just do? The comparative method.
• Heuristics guiding choice of hypothesis (terms after Campbell 2004):
  • Plausibility of the sound changes, given what we know about sound change:
    • Economy (minimize sound changes, minimize proto-phonemes)
    • Directionality (phonetic motivation)
    • "Majority rules" (last resort, corollary of Economy)
  • Plausibility of the reconstructed proto-language, given what we know about real languages:
    • Phonological fit (minimize gaps or bumps in inventory)
    • Typological fit (obey other cross-linguistic generalizations)
• In-class problem on Proto-Central Pacific

Assignment for Tuesday, November 25:

• HW 14: Do O'Grady et al.'s Exercises 8.15 and 8.16. (Please note that the example words are spelled, rather than transcribed. The text of the exercise explains how to convert most of the spelling into IPA. The Romanian i-with-a-hat spells /ɨ/.) The reconstruction should also be in IPA.

Week 14, 2025.11.18.Tu

Topics: Regular sound change.

• Motivation: Overview of comparative method (will do in detail next time)
• One factor determining "most likely" in any particular case is how common or rare the hypothesized change is in general. Hence the O'Grady reading for today: A catalogue of common changes.
• Go over HW 12 (Paamese, Early Modern Spanish)
  • Regular vs. sporadic change
  • Aligning proto- and descendant forms ("reflexes")
  • Conditioned vs. unconditioned changes (O'Grady et al.: "sequential" vs. "segmental")
  • Stating changes
  • Ordering changes
• Start on HW 13, Mbabaram.

• For 11/20 Th: HW 13, Mbabaram
• For 11/20 Th: Read Crowley 1997, Ch. 5, pp. 87--93 (Canvas), which previews the comparative method and explains cognate sets and sound correspondences (You can keep going after p. 93 if you like.)
• Then read O'Grady et al. 2017, Ch. 8, Sections 7.1 and 7.2, which explains how to apply the comparative method

Week 13, 2025.11.13.Th

Topics: Lexical change: gaining words, losing words, and changing word meaning.

Topics: Change in the lexicon

Class:

• Entering the lexicon, changing while there, and leaving it (HO)
• Tools we will need today:
  • The Oxford English Dictionary via UNC Libraries
  • Google Books' ngram viewer

Assigment:

• For 11/18 (Tu): Read O'Grady et al. 2010, Ch. 8, Sect. 2, on sound change. (This is long and relatively difficult.)
• For 11/18 (Tu): Do the problem on Paamese and Spanish sound change (HW 12)

Week 13, 2025.11.11.Tu

Topics: Social variables affecting variation: place, age, identity

Class:

• Speech communities defined by social variables.
• Social variable: Geography. Result: Regional and local dialects.
• Lexical isoglosses: names for soft drinks
• Phonological isoglosses: The Northern Cities Shift
  • Hear it some more!
  • Hear it!
  • See it!
  • Detailed Wikipedia article
• Phonological Atlas of North America
• Social variable: Identity. Result: Orientation-based variation. Case study: Martha's Vineyard (HO)
• The existence of dialects is evidence that languages can change over time. For some languages, written records provide more-direct evidence. (Discuss: HW 10, second part.)

Assigment:

• For 11/13 (Th): Read O'Grady et al. 2017, Ch. 8, Sect. 5, on lexical and semantic change.
• For 11/13 (Th): HW 11. Use the Oxford English Dictionary to find three words that entered the English lexicon in three different ways, and three words that have left it by becoming obsolete. (UNC students have free access to the OED from UNC, either directly or via the library website.)

Week 12, 2025.11.06.Th

Topics: Midterm 2 discussion. Within-language variation, setting the stage for language change.

Class:

• Go over Midterm 2.
• Big Question: How does it happen that there are so many languages?
• Gist of answer: Because there are so many speech communities, and small variations accumulate over time.
• Language vs. dialect (technical sense)
  • Mututal intelligibility
  • Audio examples ( 1. North Carolina 2. Liverpool 3. Scotland (Orkney Islands) 4. Dutch (gzipped) )
  • Max Weinreich learns something from a student
• Differences between dialects are just like differences between languages. (Examples: HO.)

Week 12, 2025.11.04.Tu

MIDTERM 2

Assignment for 11/06 Th:

• Read O'Grady et al., Ch. 13, introduction and Sections 2 and 3, on geographical dialects and change over time;
• Ch. 8, introduction and Sections 3 and 4 on morphological and syntactic change.
• HW 10: Ch. 13, Ex. 3; Ch. 8, Ex. 10, Ex. 11 i, iv, v

Week 11, 2025.10.30.Th

Topics: Grammar induction by children in first-language acquisition.

Class:

• HO: Overregularization
• HO: Critical periods (aka "sensitive periods"), in language and elsewhere. The effects of filial imprinting can be seen here.

Reminder: Midterm 2 is 11/04 Tu.

Week 11, 2025.10.28.Tu

Topics: Induction, inductive bias, and language acquisition.

Class:

• Finish up German syntax problem from HW 9.
• We've seen what gets into your head when you learn a language: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. But how does it get there?
• HO: "Inductive inference and language learning" (Canvas)
  • Inductive inference: Learning to recognize edible mushrooms
  • What is the relation to language learning?
  • Inductive bias in word learning
  • Inductive bias in grammar learning
  • Open questions about inductive bias in language
• Segments and syllables acquired in increasing order of complexity. Adult targets are "repaired" to fit child's system. (Like loanword adaptation.)
• HO: "Child phonology" (Canvas). Evidence for rules:
  • Phonologically systematic (uses natural classes, etc.)
  • "Across-the-board" changes

Assignment:

• For 10/30 Th: HW 09, O'Grady et al. 2017, Ch. 9, Exercises 1, 2, 3. This HW will be graded only on whether or not you actually did it.
• For 10/30 Th: Read over the Midterm 2 syllabus (on Canvas) and come prepared to ask questions.
• For 10/30 Th (i.e., as usual): Read O'Grady et al. 2017, Ch. 9, Section 4, on acquisition of morphology, and Sections 5 and 6, on the acquisition of syntax and what makes acquisition possible at all.

Week 10, 2025.10.23.Th

Topics: Sentential meaning and compositional semantics.

Class:

• Compositionality of semantics (HO, using extensional meaning to begin with)
• Discuss last part of HW due Monday Oct. 14th.

Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 28: Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 9, through end of Section 4 (methods for studying first-language acquisition; acquisition of phonology, vocabulary, and morphology). There is no written assignment for Tuesday.

Week 10, 2025.10.21.Tu

Topics: Lexical semantics.

Class:

• Meaning of simple predicates like red, mammal, etc.; distinction from reading between
  • Extension (set membership in real world)
  • Intension (conditions for belonging to set)
• Example: the Lieutenant Governor of Colorado
• Modelling intension. Two main ways to do it:
  • Semantic features (like phonetic features)
  • Similarity to category prototypes
• Discuss first part of HW due today.

Announcement: Midterm 2 will be on 11/04 (Tu)

Week 9, 2025.10.14.Tu

Topics: Movement and parametric variation.

Class:

• Some ways for languages to differ syntactically:
  • Different functions or meanings expressed by different categories (e.g, A instead of V)
  • Different Merge process (e.g., complements follow vs. precede heads)
  • Different Move process (e.g., different things trigger movement, different positions moved between)
• Example: Japanese phrase structure (handout)
• Reminder: English Y/N question formation ("inversion"): T moves to C if C is "+Q" and empty. Evidence:
  • He asked whether we would return.
  • *He asked whether would we return.
  • *He asked we would return.
  • (He asked would we return.)
• do-support (not in book)
• Example: Verb raising in French (handout)

Assignment for 10/21 Tu:

• Read O'Grady et al. Chapter 6 through the end of Section 1, and Chapter 6, Section 3, through the end of Subsection 3.2.
• HW 08: Do Ch. 5 (not 6!), Ex. 10 ce, Ex. 11 be, Ex. 12

Week 8, 2025.10.09.Th

Topics: Syntactic movement.

Class:

• Discussion of HW 07.
• Discuss clausal complements and CP in connection with HW.
  • CP fits X-bar schema (head/complement/specifier)
  • Recursion and embedding
• Move; deep vs. surface structure.
• HO: "Evidence for movement" (Canvas)

Assignment for 10/14 Tu: Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 5, Section 4, on differences in syntax between languages.

Week 7, 2025.10.02.Th

Topics: X-bar theory: heads, complements, specifiers, and modifiers.

Class:

• Goal: Model of syntactic abilities, accounting for spontaneous production and grammaticality judgments.
• Need: Account of nested constituent structure.
• Solution: X-bar theory. (WARNING: We will be working with a highly simplified version of the real theory.)
• X-bar schema: The basics
  • Heads (X = N, V, A, P, T, C, ...)
  • Complements (sibling to head)
  • Specifiers (child of XP)
• Apply to examples from HW 06
• See Appendix to Ch. 5, p. 207, for help with drawing tree structures.
• Evidence for basic X-bar structure (HO)
  • Constituency tests (one, do so, etc., from last time)
  • Selectional restrictions ("subcategorization"): e.g., verbs like sleep, lack, pride, etc.
  • Intrusion of modifiers (*bottle in the fridge of beer)

Assignment for 10/09 Th:

• Read O'Grady et al., Ch. 5, Sections 2 and 3, on complements and movement.
• HW 07: Do Exercises 5a-j, 9ac.

Week 7, 2025.09.30.Tu

Topics: Internal structure of sentences (syntactic constituency).

Class:

• Go over Midterm 1
• Start syntax unit. Goal: Model of syntactic abilities.
• Data it's meant to explain: Grammaticality judgments. (HO illustrating "ungrammatical") and natural production.
• Crucially dependent on internal structure of sentences ("constituency")
• Some tests for constituency in English (use with care)
  • Substitution with pronoun, etc.
  • Movement (various kinds)
  • Coordination
  • Deletion (not in O'Grady et al.)
• Examples from Constituency handout

Week 6, 2025.09.25.Th

MIDTERM 1

Assignment for 9/30 Tu:

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 5 Section 1 (includes re-reading of 1.1), and the Appendix to Ch. 5 on "Building Tree Structures"
• HW 06: O'Grady et al. Ch. 5, Exercises 2ace, 4efgh. (Exercise 4 is about material that is in the reading, but that we have not yet covered in lecture or section. It should be doable anyway.)

Week 6, 2025.09.23.Tu

Topics: Allomorphy and morphophonemics. Abstractness of underlying representations.

Class:

• Florentine Italian stop/fricative allophony
  • Morpheme pronunciation "alternates" depending on environment
  • => Allophony rule is productive
  • Only one underlying (here = phonemic) representation needed for each morpheme
• Russian final-consonant alternations:
  • Neutralization, a morphophonological (not allophonic) rule.
  • Still need only one underlying representation for each morpheme
• Point: The underlying representation has to contain all of the unpredictable information needed to predict the surface forms.
• Questions re midterm?

Week 5, 2025.09.18.Th

Topics: Internal structure of words.

Class:

• Internal morphological structure of words and compositional semantics (HO)
• Derivation vs. inflection; derivation vs. compounding (HO)
• Compounds; endo- vs. exocentricity.
• Midterm 1 syllabus (HO)
• Return HW 04, Tohono O'o'dham palatalization, with comments and in-class problem (HO).

Reminder: The first midterm will be in a week, on Thursday the 25th.

Assignment:

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 4, Section 6 (morphophonemics) and Chapter 3, p. 110, "Hints for solving advanced phonology problems". This is a very short reading assignment that will prepare us for in-class problems next time.
• Look over Midterm 1 syllabus and bring questions next time.

Week 5, 2025.09.16.Tu

Topics: Morphemes, and how to identify them. Words and lexical categories.

Class:

• Revisit the "Language in a nutshell" handout: Morphemes as minimal units of sound-meaning correspondence
• Discuss HW 5, Swahili verb morphology, with "Postscript" handout
• Properties of morphemes:
  • Lexical vs. grammatical ("functional"); open vs. closed classes
  • Free vs. bound
  • Roots vs. affixes
  • Productivity
• ICP: Exercise 1, p. 154. For each proposed bound morpheme, prove it by citing other words which share that sound and meaning: "spiteful", "preplan", "delight"
• Lexical categories (N, V, Adj, etc.). Morphosyntactic tests for category membership (handout).
• What is a "word"? (handout)

Assignment:

• For 9/18 Th: Read O'Grady et al. Chapter 4, Sections 3 and 4, on inflection, derivation, and compounding.

Week 4, 2025.09.11.Th

Topics: Knowledge of language, language universals, Universal Grammar, and other issues raised by Berent et al. 2008. Start morphology.

Class:

• Berent et al. 2008 discussion
  • Linguistic universals
  • Universal vs. language-particular knowledge
  • Innate vs. acquired knowledge
  • Sonority, and cluster phonotactics
  • Perceptual effects of L1 phonotactics
  • Why Korean?
  • Predictions and experiments
  • Conclusions
• Begin HW 5 (Swahili verbs)

• Reading (it will make more sense if you do it in this order):
  • O'Grady et al. Ch. 4 through the end of Table 4.1 on p. 123, then the Appendix to Ch. 4 on pp. 153--154. This will explain what morphemes are and how to recognize them.
  • O'Grady et al. Ch. 5, Section 1.1,, on pp. 169--172, which will explain lexical categories (noun, verb, etc.) and how to recognize them.
  • O'Grady et al. Ch. 4, from where you left off right after Table 4.1 on p. 123 through the end of Section 2 on p. 134. This will demonstrate some of the main kinds of morpheme.
• Do HW 5 (Swahili verb morphology)

Week 4, 2025.09.09.Tu

Topics: Syllables, syllabification, and syllable-based phonotactics.

Class:

• Start Zoom.
• Go over HW 4, Tohono O'o'dham, with discussion handout.
• Syllables and syllabification, illustrated with English expletive infixation (handout).
• Time permitting: In-class problem on English-to-Maori loanword adaptation (handout).

Assignment for Thursday, September 11

• Read Berent et al. 2008, with reading guide (handout), and come prepared to discuss it.
• (It may help to re-read the Pinker 1994 chapter that we read at the beginning of the semester as well.)

Announcement: Midterm 1 will be on Thursday, September 25.

Week 3, 2025.09.04.Th

Topics: Phonological rules. "Natural classes" of sounds.

Class:

• UNDERLING announcement
• Comments on HW 3, US vs. NZ vowels
• In-class problems from the O'Grady et al. book: Mokilese and Hindi (p. 112).
• Discuss Ganda liquids problem.
• Handout on "Allophony and natural classes"
  • Includes discussion of in-class problems on Mokilese (Exercise 3, p. 112) and Ganda liquids (handout, 09/02)
  • Lexicon/grammar distinction (= unpredictable/predictable).
  • Formulating allophony rules. Importance of natural classes.
• Start in-class problem on Southern Glide Weakening (will finish next time)

Assignment for Tuesday, September 9:

• HW 4, Tohono O'o'dham
• Read O'Grady et al. 2017, Ch. 3, Section 2, on syllables and sonority. This is preparation for a research paper that we will read next week.

Week 3, 2025.09.02.Tu

Topics: Contrast and allophony; phonemes and allophones.

Class:

• Return HW 2 (phonetics exercises from O'Grady et al. 2017), with comments (handout)
• Go over HW 3 (vowels in NZ vs. US English)
  • Check transcriptions.
  • Differences between the two dialects.
  • IPA details: schwa vs. wedge. Conventions for writing English diphthongs.
  • Is one of the two pronunciations (NZ or US) "more correct"?
• Handout on phonological contrast
  • English and Albanian [l] vs. [ɫ] (audio from Omniglot)
  • Ewe [b] vs. [β] (audio from UCLA Ladefoged archive)
  • Spanish [b] vs. [β] (audio from UNC faculty, Smith/Mora-Marin)
• In-class problem: Mokilese (Ch. 3, Exercise 3, p. 112). Use of T-diagrams for finding conditioning environments.
• Audio demonstration of lexical tone (UCLA, Ladefoged). Contrastive or allophonic?
• Start in-class problem: Ganda liquids

Assignment for 9/4 (Th):

• Read O'Grady et al. 2017, Ch. 3, Section 4, on phonological rules.
• Finish the Ganda liquids problem; will be discussed in class on Thursday.

Week 2, 2025.08.28.Th

Topics: Consonant manner of articulation. Vowel articulation and IPA symbols.

Class:

• Finish last time's handout on consonants: manner of articulation.
• Go over HW 2 (place, manner; IPA symbols)
• Vowel parameters: height, backness, rounding (handout).
• Time permitting: Practice comparing vowel pairs (Ibibio, Zapotec, Hasselt German)
• IPA symbols for English vowels and diphthongs. We'll stick to the book's conventions (e.g., [aj], not [aI] or [ai]).
• In-class practice: Begin HW 3

Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 2:

• Do HW 3, on U.S. and N.Z. English. The N.Z. English sound files are on Canvas, under "Assignments". You can listen to them by clicking, or, if you're feeling adventurous, you can install Praat using these instructions on Jen Smith's web page.
• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 2, Section 8, on suprasegmentals (tone, stress, length). Examples can be heard here (UCLA)
• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 3, through end of Section 1, on phonology.

Week 2, 2025.08.26.Tu

Topics: Speech as SOUNDS NOT LETTERS. IPA; what it's for and how it works. Overview of vocal-tract anatomy. Consonant articulations.

Class:

• Comments on HW 01 (handout).
• Speech as SOUNDS NOT LETTERS! (Handout)
• IPA charts
  • with clear audio at the International Phonetic Association
  • with MRI video at SAIL (U. of So. California)
• Three main parameters for consonants: Voicing (etc.), place of articulation, manner of articulation (handout).
• Some low-tech ways to observe your articulators
• Using parametric description to generalize to non-English sounds
• What do these informal descriptions really mean, in precise phonetic terms?

Assignment for Thursday, August 28:

• Read O'Grady et al. Ch. 2, Sections 5--7 on consonant manner of articulation and on vowels
• HW 2: O'Grady et al. Ch. 2, Exercises 5, 6, 7, and 9. Try to describe each group so as to exclude all of the other English sounds.
• Bring mirrors again

Week 1, 2025.08.21.Th

Topics: Structure of language. Mental grammar and descriptive grammar. The lexicon. Language as an instinct.

Class:

• Start Zoom.
• Mental vs. descriptive grammar.
• Structure of language:
  • (Mental) grammar, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics (Mental) lexicon
• Examples from your (descriptive) grammars.
• Conclusions about
  • How languages differ
  • How they don't differ
• Handout: "Language in a nutshell"
• Pinker and O'Grady readings:
  • Productivity (creativity) -- What is it? How possible? (Chomsky)
  • Talking vs. brewing, baking, and writing (Darwin)?
  • Language "not a cultural artifact" (Pinker)?
  • Handout: "Instinct, technology, and cultural evolution"
  • Universal Grammar (Chomsky)?

• Read O'Grady et al. 2005, Ch. 2, Sections 1-4, on speech sounds.
• Bring a hand mirror to class (all next week).

Week 1, 2025.08.19.Tu

Topics: Course organization. What is linguistics?

• Start Zoom.
• Course organization
  • Syllabus
  • UNC Honor Code.
• Read script on preparedness in the classroom.
• An example of linguistics: English tag questions (slides, Canvas)
• Course preview
• Go over HW 01 (handout)
• Trip to Davis Library to look at grammar books.

• Read Pinker 1994, Ch. 1 (HO)
• Read O'Grady et al 2017, Ch 1.
• From Davis Library, borrow a descriptive grammar of a language you have never heard of (it should have a title like A Grammar of ... -- the PL and PM sections abound in these). Use it to do HW 1 (HO).