05 - Language Something Or Other Flashcards
What are distinctive features?
Any characteristic of a speech sound who presence or absence distinguishes that sound from other sounds
(Voicing, placement, etc.)
What is the duality of patterning?
The concept that a small number of meaningless units can be combined into a large number of meaningful units
Duality of patterning seems to be a ______ of language.
Universal property
What is another name for a bound morpheme?
Grammatical morpheme
What is a constituent?
A grammatical unit such as a noun or a verb phrase
What does derivation mean?
It’s the series of linguistic rules that are used to generate a sentence
What is ambiguity?
A property of language where a word or sentence may be interpreted in many ways
What is linguistic productivity?
Creativity
Our ability of create and comprehend novel utterances
What is the recursive rule?
There is no limit to the number of times that we can embed one sentence into another
What is the principle of arbitrariness?
There is no intrinsic relationship between a set of sounds and the object to which these refer
What is iconicity?
How, in ASL, many signs resemble the objects or activities that they refer to
What is the linguistic definition of language?
It is an infinite number of well formed sentences
What is grammar?
A formal devise with an finite set of rules
GENERATES sentence formation in a language
A description of a person’s linguistic ability
What is deep structure ambiguity?
The condition where a single sentence can be derived from two distinct deep structures
(E.g., “Flying planes is dangerous” could mean that the act of flying planes is dangerous or that planes that are in the air are dangerous)
What are transformational rules?
A rule that transforms one phrase structure into another by adding, deleting, or moving grammatical constituents
