Web Activity 6.3 Discerning the structure

In each of the three examples below, you will find a small set of sentences that fit into a particular syntactic pattern. A word-for-word gloss and/or an approximate English translation are provided. Two of the three examples represent real languages, but one of them is an invented “alien” language. Your task is to figure out the correct pattern for each language and try to guess which of the languages is the “alien” one.

 

Example 1

mihinana	ahitra	ny	omby
eat	grass	the	cow

“Cows eat grass”

matory	ny	mpamboly
sleep	the	farmer

“The farmer is sleeping.”

namangy	anay	ny	ankizy
visited	us	the	children

“The children visited us”

tonga	taorian’	ny	rahalahi	-ko	ny	mpapianatra	antitra
arrived	after	the	brother	-my	the	teacher	old

“The old teacher arrived after my brother.”

namono	ny	akoho	tamin’	ny	antsy	ny	vehivavy
killed	the	chicken	with	the	knife	the	woman

“The woman killed the chicken with the knife.”

Question

Given the following words and their meanings, show how you would express “Noro served the children rice on the new dishes.”

Noro	i-Noro
the	ny
children	ankizy
dishes	lovia
rice	vary
new	vaovao
on	tamin
served	nandroso

 

Example 2

bandrodopan	milbesk	lani	Vim
fell-accidentally	horse	off	Vim

“Vim accidentally fell of the horse.”

slegenbalto	forago	nitpa	dan
sweet	children	peanuts	liked

“The children like sweet peanuts.”        

gofinadil	hapan	mol
lion	growled	fierce

“The lion growls fiercely.”

flastridilog	bodal-i	rovan	bin
bowl	mother-her	gave	woman

“The woman gave the bowl to her mother.”

wabisiblit	vandika	Slibha	san	wo
book	new	Slibha	showed	me.

“Slibha showed me the new book.”

Question

Given the following words and their meanings, show how you would express “The man devoured the chicken quickly.”

chicken	bindrina
devoured	nastrilikoan
quick	flem
man	bastik

 

Example 3

Try to decipher the next pattern without the help of a word-by-word gloss:

es nopirku jaunu gramatu 
“I bought a new book.”

vina nopirka tris gramatas 
“She bought three books.”

vina man iedeva gramatu
“She gave me the book.”

gramata ir uz galda
“A book is on the table.”

man ir gramata
“I have a book.”

vina redzeja tris kaki
“She saw three cats.”

es vinai suni
“I gave her a dog.

tris kaki ir zem galda
“Three cats are under the table.”

Questions

1. Show how you would say the equivalent of “She has three cats.”
2. Did you have any trouble in figuring out the above patterns? What assumptions did you find yourself making about language structure? Were you able to identify one language that you think is clearly “alien” language”? If so, what tipped you off? 
3. Put yourself in the shoes of a young child trying to learn the underlying patterns in these languages. Do you think the child would make the same kinds of assumptions you did? Why or why not?

Answers

Click here to see the answers.

Reference

Fromkin, V. A. et al. (2000) Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.