Online resources

Here are some resources to help you explore and expand on course material. Some of them are also linked from lecture or recitation slides.

Jump to:
Language diversity	Morphology	Semantics and pragmatics
Phonetics	Syntax	Sociolinguistics
Phonology	Acquisition	Historical linguistics

Language diversity

• Watch: Video - Hark the Sound of Dialect Diversity at UNC-Chapel Hill (9:39)

Phonetics

• Watch: An MRI video of a person speaking (YouTube) — just watch and try to get a sense of how quickly the articulators move
  • After he stops speaking, you can also see him swallow
  • For fun: Can you tell what language this is?
  • MRI = magnetic resonance imaging (similar to X-ray, but without radiation)

• Read and try: A friendly introduction to the IPA and phonetic transcription for American English, from the Center for Language Science at Penn State

• Listen: Links to audio files illustrating IPA symbols
  • Good for consonants and non-English vowels — this clickable IPA chart from the book A Course in Phonetics
  • Good for the vowels of American (and British) English — these vowel charts from the book A Course in Phonetics
  • That web site may ask you for permission to access your microphone — this is not necessary for listening to sound examples

• Watch: Links to MRI video files illustrating IPA symbols
  • The web site used for this is from the Speech Production and Articulation Knowledge Group, USC

• Try: Build your own consonants by setting vocal-tract properties
  • Interactive vocal-tract diagram by Daniel Currie Hall, St. Mary's University, Halifax

• Try: LING 101 Quizlet flash cards for
  • Practicing with consonant symbols and properties
  • Practicing with vowel symbols and properties

• Watch: After learning about phonetics, play the first video again and see if you can recognize the properties of the consonants and vowels that you hear!
  • Can you see the velum open and close for nasal and oral sounds?
  • Can you see the lips move for labial sounds or round vowels?
  • Can you see the tip/blade of the tongue and the body of the tongue form constrictions?
  • Can you see which vowels are higher/lower, more front/more back?

Phonology

• Watch: "German Coast Guard - Lost in Translation" (YouTube, 0:40 sec)
  • Consider: What does this skit show about the difference in phonological mental grammar between German and English?

• Watch: A step-by-step phonological analysis of Kenyang back stops, by Vainamoinenspokethus (YouTube, 19:51)
  • Demonstrates how to solve a phonology problem
  • Reviews allophones, environments, phonological rules, contrast, minimal pairs

Morphology

• Play: Morphology puzzles (LING 101 Quizlet)
  • Swahili matching puzzle
  • How many morphemes?

• Play: English — Inflectional or derivational morpheme? (LING 101 Quizlet)
  • As a matching game
  • As flash cards

• Watch: Morphology (part 1), by Evan Ashworth (YouTube; 14:19 min)
  • Reviews: morpheme, word, free/bound, inflectional/derivational
  • Useful information overall — but a couple of points to watch out for
    • "Bound morphemes are affixes" — this is English-specific, since many languages have roots that are bound
    • The speaker makes one prediction that has been proven wrong in recent years! Can you spot it?

Syntax

• Play: X' schema basics (LING 101 Quizlet)
  • As a matching game
  • As flash cards

• FYI: Resources for creating syntax trees in electronic documents
  • CamScanner app (Apple and Android)
    • Draw a tree on paper and make a clear, clean scan with your phone (better than taking a photo)
  • Syntax Tree Generator, by Miles Shang
    • Enter your sentence in brackets and generate a tree image
  • On Google Docs: "Insert > Drawing > + New"
    • Type the words and XP levels, then add lines to make your tree
    • A similar function is available for other word processors, like MS Word
  • Use a Paint or Draw program like MS Paint

• Read: Blog posts by Gretchen McCulloch of All Things Linguistic
  WARNING: Do not use non-class tree structure conventions on HW or exams, even if they appear in the following examples
  • Highly recommended — So you asked the internet how to draw syntax trees. Here's why you're confused.
  • If you'd like another perspective on the process of drawing trees (some tree details differ from our textbook) — How to Draw a Syntax Tree, Part 8: A step-by-step tree-drawing guide, with gifs
  • If you're interested in the history of syntactic analysis, see her series "Types of Trees" — A sentence is an S | A sentence is an IP | A sentence is a TP

• Watch: Videos discussing constituency tests
  WARNING: Do not use non-class tree structure conventions on HW or exams, even if they appear in the following examples

  • Moving Constituents (Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh) - up to timepoint 7:50 (stop when she gets to "WH questions")
    • Discussion and examples of the movement test for constituency applied to different types of phrases
    • Demonstrates that movement examples often need a context of contrasting information to sound natural

  • On Constituents (Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh; 7:43)
    • Evidence from question formation and child language that syntax groups words into constituents

  • Substituting Constituents (Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh; 19:28)
    • Examples of the substitution test for constituency, plus discussion of what a 'head' is in syntax

• Watch: Videos discussing syntax topics and providing more examples
  WARNING: Do not use non-class tree structure conventions on HW or exams, even if they appear in the following examples

  • No Clause for Alarm (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space) - up to timepoint 4:05 (stop when he gets to relative clauses)
    • Discussion of CPs and embedded clauses (embedded sentences)
    • This video uses "DP" instead of "NP" in trees; don't worry about that difference

  • LING 101: How to draw syntax trees - Part 6 | Diagramming questions by Caleb Hicks for Carolina Courses Online (15:05)
    • Warning: This older UNC-CH LING 101 video was written to go with an older edition of the CL textbook
    • The main difference is that our "TP" phrase is called "IP" here — don't let this label switch confuse you

  • Happy Little Trees (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space, 8:00)
    • Useful as an overview of phrases in the X' schema (including modifiers)
    • Some tree details are different from ours (Det is a "D" head of a "DP" in his trees)

  • Trace Evidence (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space) up to timepoint 4:25
    • Overview of movement rules in forming questions
    • More evidence for the trace (t) that is left behind when an element moves
    • If you watch the second half (4:25-8:11), the video shows how certain syntactic differences between languages can be explained by movement
    • Some tree details are different from ours (sentences here are "IP" rather than "TP")

Language acquisition (L1)

• Watch: Some videos illustrating experiments on children's acquisition of morphology and syntax
  • A classic "wug" test experiment demonstration, featuring original "wug" researcher Jean Berko Gleason (1:06)
  • An amateur "wug" test (4:44, but just watch a few trials to get the idea – the image turns right-side up by 0:15)
    • Shows some of the pitfalls of child language experiments!
    • This child is a little younger and doesn't have adult-like responses to all items (she also seems to lose interest)
  • A syntax acquisition experiment on Wh Movement (Linguistic Society of America, 3:25)

• Read: A seasonal blog post — Child language and the "trick-or-treat" Halloween ritual (Jean Berko Gleason for NOVA)
  • Berko Gleason is the researcher who invented the "wug" test for child morphology in the 1950s

• Watch: Some videos reviewing concepts in L1 acquisition
  • All You Need Is Wug (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space, 8:39)
    • Morphology in L1 acquisition (includes lexical/functional morphemes and "wug" tests)
  • Building Baby Trees (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space, 10:12)
    • The stages of syntactic development in L1 acquisition (and some syntactic analysis)
  • Negative Space (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space, 8:54)
    • Discussion and examples showing that direct correction and recasts don't explain L1 acquisition

Semantics and pragmatics

• Play: How are these sentence meanings related? (LING 101 Quizlet)

• Watch: Some videos illustrating sentence relations and indirect communication
  • Grice's Maxims of Conversation, by THUNK (8:16)
  • Clues to Meaning (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space, 8:13)
    • Reviews implicatures (inferences drawn by using the maxims of conversation), entailment, and presupposition
  • Grice's Maxims in 'The Big Bang Theory' (University of Nottingham, 4:42)
    • Food for thought — Do these clips show maxims being cluelessly violated, or do they show maxims being flouted (purposefully violated to produce indirect communication)?

Sociolinguistics

• Take part: The Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes
  • Take the survey yourself, or view a summary of the results
  • See a New York Times version of this survey, with maps

• Explore: Videos and resources about language varieties in North Carolina
  • Hark the Sound of Dialect Diversity at UNC-Chapel Hill (9:39)
  • Voices of North Carolina (NCSU Language & Life Project, 56:22)
    • Full 1-hour PBS documentary on language varieties in NC
  • More NC language resources from NCSU
    • The Language & Life project
    • Dialect education resources for NC schools

• Watch: Some videos illustrating language variation and attitudes toward language varieties
  • The Significance of Linguistic Profiling (John Baugh, TEDx Emory, 18:31)
    • For a quick look, watch up to time point 3:37 (stop at "As we move ahead...")
  • How your accent taps into the prejudice of your listener (Metro.co.uk, 6:40)
    • For a UK perspective: Examples of several British, Irish, Scottish regional varieties of English
  • Code-Switching, from the documentary Talking Black in America (Language & Life Project, NCSU, 3:54)
    • Links to more excerpts from Talking Black in America (NCSU Language & Life Project)
  • Excerpt (4:28) from the documentary Spanish Voices: Spanish and English in the Southeastern United States (NCSU Language & Life Project)
    • Full documentary is here (26:59)

Historical linguistics

• Watch: Some videos reviewing concepts in historical linguistics
  • Recovering History (Moti Lieberman, The Ling Space, 9:25)
  • Grimm's Law and the Regularity of Sound Change (Jackson Crawford, 10:37)

• Watch: A documentary about the history of English
  • The Story of English, Part 2: Mother Tongue (PBS, 57:42)
    • An overview of the history of the English language from Old English to Early Modern English
    • The film is old (1987) but the examples are fun