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
What is another names for transformational rules?
Transformations
What is particle-movement transformation?
It accounts for the moving of particles around noun phrases
“John picked up the phone” -VS- “John picked the phone up”
What does it mean that something is structure dependent?
The linguistic rules apply to the GRAMMATICAL CONSTITUENTS instead of the individual words
What is a passive transformation?
A transformational rule that transforms the deep structures of an active sentence into a passive one
What is an auxiliary verb?
A “helping” verb
Usually a derivative of “to be” or “to do”
Is used in conjunction with the main verb
What is the derivational theory of complexity?
The theory that states that the psychological COMPLEXITY of a sentence is directly proportional to the LENGTH of its derivation
What is lexical-functional grammar?
A theory of grammar
States that structural relationships are built into ENRICHED LEXICAL ENTRIES rather than with transformational rules
Who proposed the idea of lexical-functional grammar? When?
Bresnan in 1978
What is an agent?
The person doing the action
What is a patient?
The one who receives the action
What is psychologically realistic grammar?
A grammar or theory of language that takes psychological processing considerations into account
Another name for Bresnan’s lexical-functional grammar
What is a parameter?
A grammatical feature that can be set to any of several values
What is a null-subject parameter?
That some languages permit constructions that have no subject
(Italian is a null-subject language; English is not)
