2336886
Description
Flashcards by Emily Fenton, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Emily Fenton
over 9 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| *Linguistic Universals (4) | Properties which are shared by all languages 1. languages are built up by smaller components (usually speech sounds) 2. vowels and consonants 3. production of negative statement, a question or give an order 4. simple colour terms (black/white or dark/light) |
| Compositionality | How words (and sentences) are built up of small speech sounds being strung together to make a word with meaning |
| Recursion | Phenomenon whereby a linguistic unit of one type contains another linguistic unit of the same type (ex. "the dog of the man with the hat without a feather") |
| *Property of Creativity | One differentiating feature of human languages from animal languages (for example); the idea that using language we can say anything we want using the rules at our disposal |
| Form/Meaning Link | Usually there is no link between form (of word) and the meaning, so words are said to be "arbitrary" (ex. the word "horse" says nothing about what the word actually means.) There are exceptions, as with onomatopoeia |
| Constructed Languages | Languages which have been deliberately made by humans (possibly most widely spoken example is Esperanto) |
| Computer Languages | Similar to constructed languages because they are made deliberately by humans, but different because they have made for a specific task |
| *Modalities | The forms or modes which language can take (ex. sign language, spoken language, written language) |
| *Descriptive Grammar | Neutrally describes rules of grammar and how it is used; not indicating whether one use of grammar is better than another |
| *Prescriptive Grammar | Prescribes which form of language is correct and which is incorrect; operates under the idea that grammar is either wrong or right (usually based on standard languages) |
| Diachronic description | Describing grammar from the perspective of change (ex. looking at English grammar of the 15th century compared to now) |
| Synchronic Description | Describing grammar at a particular moment in time (ex. looking at one set of grammar compared to another) |
| *Pedagogical Grammar | Also called "learners grammer"; describes grammar in terms of teaching and learning Usually very prescriptive, looking at the correct forms of grammar |
| Subfields of Linguistics (6) | 1. Semantics 2. Syntax 3. Phonetics 4. Pragmatics 5. Phonology 6. Morphology |
| *Linguistic Competence | The ability for an adult user of a language to produce sentences in correct form as well as understand them |
| *Communicative Competence | How to use language in different situations; interpreting language requires a certain amount of knowledge of the world |
| *Performance | The actual use of our linguistic competence, which actually ends up limiting us (for example, we can not process very long sentences because we forget the beginning of them by the end) |
| *Mental Lexicon | Knowledge of words (like a vocabulary) + knowledge of the world (not only direct meanings of words but also meanings in context, etc) |
| *Activation | When we search our mental lexicon in order to assign meaning to whatever we are reading or hearing; fans out to include word forms related to the word we heard |
| *Cognitive System | All the types of knowledge we have which allow us to interpret and use language (activation, linguistic competence, knowledge of the world, etc) |
| *Aphasia | Language dysfunctions which are caused by an accident to the brain; interrupts either speaking abilities or interpretation |
| Damage to the Wernick's Area | Area of the brain which, when damaged, leads to problems with comprehension/interpretation |
| Damage to Broca's Area | Damage to this area of the brain effects speaking, while interpretation remains intact |
| Continuous Signal | Formation of speech sounds which, when spoken, have no break. We create breaks in a sentence because of our knowledge of the language, it does not mean there are actually gaps in spoken language |
| Co-articulation | When the pronunciation of one speech sound is dependent on the sounds before and after it |
| *Bottom-Up Processing | When we identify speech sounds within a continuous signal and build them into words |
| *Top-down Processing | Understanding meaning based on what we expect to hear (influenced by knowledge, context, expectations) |
| Cohort Model | The model which describes when a set of words is activated at a certain stage of word recognition |
| *Context Effect | Indications of context lead to a faster/more immediate understanding of what is being said |
| *Syntactic Strategies | Strategies used in order to comprehend meaning of a sentence; often it involves placing temporal indications with the nearest verb, for example. Sometimes it doesn't work, leading us to "up the garden path sentences" |
| *Semantic Strategies | Method of understanding which comes from identifying the most important words in a sentence (content words) and then find meaning |
| *Stages of Production (6) | 1. Conceptualizing: decisions about content of what you are going to say 2. Pre-verbal message: you've decided on the message but it does not have a linguistic form 3. Grammatical encoding: word and sentence construction 4. Phonological encoding: words being built up syllable by syllable during articulation 5. Phonetic plan: all information needed to produce the utterance 6. Articulation |
| Slips of the Tongue | When something goes wrong at the articulation phase, usually due to phonological encoding; the planning is fine but as it comes out you slip up |
| *Innate Language Faculty | Noam Chompsky's theory that humans have the inherent ability to learn language more quickly as children then as adults; it is in our nature to work at mastering language |
| *Imitation | Traditional theory about language that stated that children learn language on the basis of imitation; relying on frequent repetition and memorization |
| *Stages of First Language Acquisition | 1. Pre-linguistic stage 2. One/two-word stage 3. Differentiation (building words into short sentences) 4. Completion stage (polishing up) |
| Babbling | Stage between pre-linguistic and one/two word stages where babies make "babbling" noises such as "gagagaga"; they are practicing their ability of making sound |
| *Ommission | Often happens in early language acquisition phases, where the child leaves out "non-essential" words (usually pronouns, function words, etc) |
| *Substitution | Happens when children substitute either sounds or words for one another (saying "sis" instead of "this"); this will be corrected during the differentiation stage |
| *Overextension | When a child uses a word more broadly then is generally allowed (for example, they use the word "dad" to describe all men) |
| *Overgeneralization | When a child grasps a grammatical rule, but applies it to everything because he/she does not yet know all the exceptions (ex. saying "foots" instead of "feet" because they know that often to make a plural you add an 's') |
| Developmental Errors | Mistakes made during the language process; considered a natural part of language learning |
| Foreign Language | Usually takes place in schools, and is generally knowledge/learning of language which is not commonly used in the area |
| Second Language | Learning/knowledge of language which is not the one you learned as a child, but which is commonly spoken in your linguistic environment |
| Target Language | The language that the learner is attempting to learn |
| *Factors of Second Language Acquisition (7) | 1. Age 2. Motivation 3. Attitude 4. Aptitude/ability 5. Exposure 6. 1st language influence (positive or negative) 7. Learning/teaching method |
| *Critical Period | The time which is best for learning languages; usually ends around age 12; after that it becomes much more difficult for an adult to learn a new language |
| *Transitional Structures | Structure/forms which are applied to target language but are actually from the native language |
| *Interlanguage Stages | Language learners moving steadily to increasing proficiency in target language; goes through series of interlanguages |
| Fossilization | What happens when a second-language speaker if the learning process stops before the level of mastery, and it is unlikely that all mistakes will be fixed |
| Positive/Negative Transfer | These are both concepts involving the relation between the native language and the target language; positive transfer is one the native language helps you gain proficiency in the target language. Negative transfer is when native language hinders the process of learning the target language (especially when dealing with sentence structure/word order) |
| Simultaneous Bilingualism | Parallel acquisition of language; learning two languages at the exact same time growing up (ex. mother speaks one language to child, father speaks another?) |
| Sequential Bilingualism | Learning one language from birth, and start a second language at a young age (for example at age 5) |
| *Speech Development Disorders | When language does not develop in the normal time frame, generally thought to be the first five years of language learning |
| *Constituents | Parts of a sentence which make up it's meaning and adjusts how we analyze a sentence (ex. [the student][bought a book][yesterday] - each part is a constituent) |
| *Clause | Can be thought of as "subsentences" because they are parts of the sentence which hold meaning on their own In the sentence "he knows the earth is round", [he knows] is the main clause, and [that the earth is round] is an embedded clause |
| *Phrase | A type of constituent where the central element of the sentence is one word; phrases are all constituents that aren't clauses |
| Referential Function | Phrases which refer to entities (objects, persons, properties, events) |
| Predicative Function | Phrases which are used to predicate a relation between entities (verb phrases) |
| Attributive Function | Phrase which is used to attribute properties or features to something else (ex. adding "yesterday afternoon" to the end of a sentence) (adjective or adverbial phrases) |
| Relational Function | Phrase which specifies locational relation between, for example, an event and an entity (adpositional phrases) |
| *5 Types of Phrases | 1. Noun phrase: phrase used to refer to an entity 2. Verb phrase: phrase used to predicate relation between entities 3. Adjective phrase: phrase used to specify property of a noun 4. Adverbial phrase: phrase used to specify property of a verb 5. Adpositional phrase: phrase specifying location (in, on, etc) |
| *Heads & Modifiers | A head is the obligatory part of the sentence; the word or phrase on which meaning relies. Modifiers literally modify that head Ex. "The tall man..." [man] is the head and [tall] is the modifier |
| *Word Classes (5) | 1. Noun 2. Verb 3. Adjective 4. Adverb 5. Adposition |
| Content Words | Typically "head" words in a sentence; the words which are necessary for meaning of sentence to be established. Content words generally have one meaning associated with them, and cannot be used as freely as function words |
| Function Words | Function words have grammatical meaning and can be used more freely than content words (ex. "the") |
| *Predicate | Used in a phrase to express the relation between different constituents in a clause; usually uses verb phrases. Ex. "John laughed" with [laughed] being the predicate, because it says something about John |
| *Argument | Phrases which are obligatory with a certain predicate; for example the predicate "buy" requires an argument: who buys? what do they buy? |
| *Adjunct | Constituents which are added to a sentence which are not required by the predicate "[yesterday], he walked [along the beach]" - words in [] are adjuncts |
| *Valency of Predicate | Concerns the number of arguments required by the predicate in the phrase |
| *Types of Predicate Valency (5) | 1. Intransitive: one place predicate (predicate requires one argument) 2. Transitive: two place predicate 3. Ditransitive: three place predicate 4. Four place predicate (uncommon) 5. Zero place predicate (requires no argument) |
| *Semantic Roles (6) | 1. Agent: the actor 2. Patient: the entity undergoing the action 3. Location: where event occurs 4. Instrument: entity used to carry out action 5. Recipient: entity getting something 6. Source: origin of that something |
| *Grammatical Roles (2) | 1. Subject: perspective of the agent in a phrase 2. Object: secondary perspective |
| Active/Passive Clause | Active clause: transitive predicate where the agent is the subject (ex. "the father gave a car to his daughter") Passive clause: transitive predicate where the patient is the subject (ex. "the daughter was given a car by her father") In both cases the father is the subject |
| Valency Reduction | Reducing the amount of arguments required by a predicate (ex. changing "John broke the glass" to "the glass broke") |
| *Reflexive Construction | Forming of a phrase in order to indicate something being done to oneself; sometimes it goes hand in hand with valency reduction Ex. "the child washes himself" rather than "the child washes the child" |
| *Pronominalization | The process of replacing a phrase with a pronoun. Ex. we say "Tom bought a book, and HE read IT the next day" rather than "Tom bought a book, and Tom read the book the next day" |
| *Pro-Drop | Process whereby you can leave out the pronoun (subject) in a sentence; not really possible in English |
| *Word | There are two criteria for something to be a word: it must have a) sound shape, and b) syntax In English this means a) one vowel minimum and b) can be used in a sentence |
| *Clitic | Words that cannot exist on there own, but must have other words to "lean on" |
| *Iconicity | When there is a direct link between the form of a word and it's meaning; this is quite rare in English, but one example is in onomatopoeia words |
| *Arbitrariness | Also concerning the link (or lack there of) between word forms and meanings; in English most words have arbitrary form |
| *Swadesh List | List of words which linguists can use to detect family relationships between languages; supposedly a list of most common words in any language which can be translated to find similarities |
| *Dictionary Types (7) | 1. Monolingual (definitions) 2. Bilingual 3. Frequency (how often a word occurs in...) 4. Thesaurus 5. Concordance (definitions of words within a given text) 6. Retrograde (alphabetical definitions starting with the last letters of the word) 7. Picture dictionary |
| *Open Word Classes | Usually associated to content words; that is words that are "open" and extendable; anyone is allowed to add to a list of open words |
| *Closed Word Classes | Words which are closed and cannot be extended or added to; usually these are function words or grammatical terms |
| *Lexicon | A kind of "dictionary" of all the words you know |
| *Lemma | A word that has different but overlapping/related meanings (ex. "environment" can mean physical surroundings, living circumstances, ecological external conditions, etc) |
| *Lexicography | The discipline concerned with the composition and production of the various kinds of dictionaries |
| Homonym | Words with the same form but different meanings (not rooted in the same notion - that would be polysemy) |
| *Semantic Relations (3) | 1. Hyponymy: words that are a type of something else (TEA is a type of beverage) 2. Antonymy: words with opposing meanings (black/white, night/day) 3. Synonymy: two words with the same meaning |
| *Denotation vs Connotation | Denotation: literal meaning of the word Connotation: emotional/stylistic value of a word |
| Internally Complex Words | The word can be broken down and it is possible to analyze the different parts of it ("learnable" -> [learn] + [-able]) |
| Internally Simple Words | No parts of the word to further break down (ex. "learn") |
| *Morpheme | The smallest identifiable component of a word that carries meaning. (Ex. the word "learnable" has two morphemes) |
| *Morphology | The study of how words are built up out of morphemes |
| *Derivation | When a non-lexical element is added to a word so that it forms a new words altogether ("bakery" refers to a different entity than "baker") |
| *Inflection | Alterations made to the root word that don't change the core meaning, but adjust the word for grammatical reasons (ex. "walk" and "walked") |
| *Stem | This is the "root" word which can be added to with inflection (ex. walk, swim, must) |
| *Paradigm | The list of forms which a particular stem can take |
| *Contextual Inflection | When grammatical context indicates what formation the word should take; ex. if the subject is plural/singular, then the verb changes in certain ways) |
| *Inherent Inflection | Formation of words does not depend on context, but on what the speaker is trying to say (do they mean plural or singular?) |
| *Affixation | Process of attaching affixes to stem words in order to change their grammatical meaning |
| Affixes (4) | 1. Suffix (added to end of word) 2. Prefix (added to beginning of word) 3. Infix (added to middle of word) 4. Circumfix (added to beginning and end of word) |
| *Reduplication | When a word is repeated quickly; in English we have see it in "hush hush" or "tut tut" In some languages they use reduplication to indicate plurality |
| *Conversion | When word category change does not change the word form (ex. "did you BUY a book?" "yes it was a great BUY" - goes from being a verb to a noun without changing form) |
| *Suppletion | When there is no recognizable stem word in the forms for one word (ex. "to be" -> am, is, are, was, been) |
| Productivity | Refers to the application ability of a word; inflection is commonly more productive than derivation because it can be applied all over the place |
| *Morphologically Complex | A language which uses long words with many "parts" rather than many short words in a sentence to say the same thing |
| *Morphologically Simple/Isolating | Language uses many simple, short words and forms it into a sentence; almost every word will have only one morpheme |
| *Polysynthetic Languages (2) | Language in which words tend to consist of many morphemes. Polysynthetic language can either be (1) agglutinating or (2) fusional |
| Agglutinating Language | A language where words tend to have a sequence of distinct morphemes, and each morpheme has one meaning |
| *Fusional Languages | Language where morphemes in words can simultaneously convey several meanings; makes it harder to identify meanings of different morphemes because they are "fused" together |
| *Vocal Tract (5 steps) | 1. Air through the windpipe 2. Vibrating vocal folds/chords 3. Through pharynx to the .... 4. Oral cavity and... 5. Nasal cavity |
| *Hearing (8 steps) | 1. Outer ear (part we can see) 2. External auditory canal 3. Tympanic membrane 4. Middle ear 5. Hammer/anvil/stirrup 6. Cochlea 7. Inner ear 8. Acoustic nerve |
| Phonetic Transcription | Symbols conveying specific sounds as defined by the International Phonetics Association (IPA) |
| *Vowels (speech sounds) | Relatively "open" sound with little to no "narrowing"; depends on formation of lips/tongue |
| Horizontal Tongue Position (Vowels) (3) | Front: tongue "root" at front of mouth (sound in bEAt) Central: tongue root at middle of mouth (/a/ in about) Back: tongue root at back of mouth (/a/ in fAther) |
| Vertical Tongue Position (Vowels) (5) | 1. Close: pUt 2. Close-mid: santÉ 3. Mid: About 4. Open-mid: cUt 5. Mid: bOdy |
| Consonants (2 types) | 1. Pulmonic: using air from lungs 2. Non-pulmonic: air from larynx or tongue (much less common in English) - includes clicks |
| 3 Distinctions in Pulmonic Consonants | 1. Manner of articulation: degree and nature of narrowing (plosives, fricatives, etc) 2. Place of articulation: where in the mouth the sound is formed (teeth, tongue, lips) 3. Voicing: concerns vibration of vocal folds |
| Voiced vs Voiceless Consonants | The difference between these two consonants is determined by vibration of vocal cords. Some consonants have the same place and manner of articulation, but differ in voicing (ex. the difference between /t/ and /d/) |
| *Rounding | Refers to whether or not your lips are rounded when producing a vowel; degree of roundness can subtly change the sound of vowels |
| *Dipthongs | A vowel sound in a word which is actually a combination of two vowel sounds; starts out as one but ends as another. (ex. "mine" starts out [a] and ends with [I] before the "-ne") |
| *Monopthongs | Pure vowel sound which starts and ends with the same vowel sound |
| Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion | The process of converting text symbols (like those which I'm writing with now) to phonemes (sound symbols) |
| *International Phonetic Association | Organization promoting the scientific study of phonetics; developed the IPA phonetic transcription (like an alphabet of phonemes) |
| *Phonology | Study of sounds as they are relevant as units of language |
| Distinctiveness | What makes it possible to distinguish between words based on individual sounds (ex. difference between bark and mark) |
| *Minimal Pair | Two words that have one speech sound different (bat/mat or grab/gram) |
| *Allophones | Two possible pronunciations of the same phoneme; choosing an allophone depends on surrounding phonemes |
| *Sound System | Set of all phonemes in a language; most languages have between 20-40 phonemes; languages with few phonemes usually have more allophones |
| Toneme | Tone variation in a phoneme which changes the meaning (seen in Mandarin) |
| *Morphophonology | The process of sound adaptation that occurs when morphemes are linked together |
| Morpheme | Combination of distinctive features or phonemes |
| Assimilation | Happens when certain phonemes adapt based on their surroundings to be more similar to other phonemes |
| *Allomorph | A morpheme once it has changed form as a cause of the context |
| *Writing System | An attempt to represent speech in a graphic form; usually done by representing individual speech sounds by distinct symbols or letters |
| *Alphabetic | Type of writing system which represents one speech sound one with one letter or symbol; in principle it means you need equal letters to speech sounds |
| Genetic Relationships | Language which shares a "family relationship"; usually it means that two languages share a common ancestor, as is seen with English and German |
| *Typological Relationship | Languages which have chosen (out of a set of "options") roughly the same structure (for example, whether they are SVO, SOV, VSO, etc) |
| *Areal Languages | Languages which are not genetically similar but have been spoken in the same area for a long time and so have adopted similarities as a result of language contact |
| *Sprachbund | Area where different languages have merged in one way or another (loan words, language contact) Ex. languages in the Balkan states |
| *Language Family | Group of languages which share an ancestor (for example Germanic language family include English, German, Dutch; Latin language family includes French, Portuguese, Italian) |
| Toponymics | Study of place names to track geographically historical language spread |
| *Comparative Reconstruction | Using key, common words to compare languages directly in order to find a common form with the minimum of sound changes |
| *Proto-Forms | The construction of words which is uncomfirmed, for example because the words are no longer used and we don't know how to form them |
| *Proto-Languages | Can be developed if enough proto-forms have been adopted |
| *Sound Laws | The assumption that some speech sounds are more likely to morph into others; in Indo-European it is seen that /p/ often morphed into /f/ as languages split |
| *Language and Culture | Relation between culture and language is seen on a lexical level; for example, Inuit people have more words for snow than any other language, because it makes up such a large part of their culture An example is kinship terms, which reflect cultural view of family relations |
| *Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis | The theory that language actually shapes/influences culture and world-view "We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation" (354) |
| *Language Variation | Differences in a language in a specific period of time |
| *Sociolinguistics | The study of language variation specifically in the area of where language variation is caused by cultural differences |
| *Dialect | Usually defined as a regional variation of a "standard" language, but there are no clearly boundaries; the main difference between language and dialect is that languages have political backing |
| Language Variety | Describes all kinds of variation within a language (accent, dialect, etc) |
| *Accent | Regional variety based on the pronunciation of words; generally share the same grammatical and lexical features |
| Types of Variation (6) | 1. Phonological variation (speech sound level) 2. Morphological variation (word level) 3. Syntactic variation (sentence level) 4. Lexical variation (word use) 5. Semantic variation (sentence structure) 6. Pragmatic variation (meaning) |
| *Isogloss | Geographical representation of boundaries of a particular linguistic variation (a map) |
| Social Factors -> Linguistic Variation (5) | 1. Region 2. Socio-economic class 3. Ethnic group 4. Gender 5. Age |
| *Sociolect | Dialect spoken by two people from the same region who are from different social classes (ex. Queen's English vs. Cockney) |
| *Ethnolect | Dialect/accent attributed to a specific ethnic group (with no strict boundary) Ex. African American Vernacular |
| *Situational Factors of Language Variation | The main one is the difference between formal speaking and informality; changing the way we speak according to the situation we are in - can be significant alterations |
| Register | Form of a language used by a certain group of speakers in certain situations, usually categorized by "jargon" (ex. "legal register") |
| *Social Meaning | The extra information carried by a particular language form when it is associated to the social status of the speaker |
| *Hypercorrection | Using a "standard" rule but over applying it in the wish to appear to be of a higher social class; usually results in non-standard language *Think of overgeneralization |
| *Language Attitudes | Attitude of language users towards a language variety (related to social meaning) |
| *Covert Prestige | Positive attitude towards non-standard varieties of language, especially when non-standard variety can be used as a way of distinguishing "us" vs "them" |
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