1) Linguistics as a study Flashcards
How many languages is spoken all over the world?
6000-7000
What is the most endangered language in Europe?
Tsakonian
What is diacronic linguistic?
the study of language change, also called historical linguistics
What is synchronic linguistics?
the study of the state of language at any given point in time
What is general linguistics?
general principles of the study of all languages, characteristics of human language as a phenomenon
What is applied linguistics?
application of linguistic theories, methods and findings
What is the most well-developed branch of applied linguistics?
the teaching and learning of foreign languages
What is descriptive linguistics?
describes the facts of linguistics usage as they are, and not how they ought to be
What is contrastive linguistics?
identifies the common characteristics of different languages or language families
What is structural linguistics?
pays explicit attention to the way in which linguistic features can be described in terms of structures and systems
What are some contemporary disciplines of linguistics?
pragmatics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse and conversation analysis, lexicography, corpus linguistics, semiotics
What is grammatical competence?
allows us to produce and interpret grammatical sentences, includes the knowledge of which speech sounds are part of a given L, how they may or may not be strung together
What is communicative competence?
refers to a language user’s grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, etc. as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately
Name the universal properties of language
Modularity, Discreteness, Constituency, Recursion and productivity, Arbitrariness, Reliance on context, Variability, Displacement
What does Modularity mean?
= the language system is modular, it consists of a number of different subsystems which interact in specific ways
What does Discreteness mean?
discreteness divides the continuous space of sound or meaning into discrete units
What are discrete linguistic units?
the term is especially used in phonetics and phonology to refer to sounds which have relatively clear-cut boundaries, = only certain number of units is inside it (cat/bat, change in meaning - phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases)
What does Constituency mean?
all languages organize basic discrete units into constituents, you can create more complex units from simple units
What are constituents?
= linguistic units which are functional components of larger constructions, we can combine constituents to produce an infinitive variety of sentences of indefinite length
What does Recursion do?
it allows a process to be applied repeatedly
What is Productivity?
the creative capacity of language users to produce and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences
What is Arbitrariness?
linguistic forms are said to lack any physical correspondence with the entities in the world to which they refer
What does Reliance on context mean?
context is important to decode the message, a consequence of arbitrariness is duality - a single sequence of sounds may have more than one meaning
What does Variability mean?
although all languages share some universal characteristics, they also differ in many ways, they are variable
What does Displacement mean?
language can be used to refer to context removed from the immediate situation of the speaker (it can be displaced), we can describe or refer to things that are not visually present
English has _____ sounds represented by _______ letters
36, 26
