Ch. 5 - Language and Communication Flashcards
Primary means of human communication, spoken and written
Language
Communication systems of non-human primates
Call systems
Creating new expressions that are comprehensible to other speakers
Productivity
Transmission through learning, basic to language
Cultural transmission
Describing things and events that are not present; basic to language
Displacement
Study of communication through body movements and facial expressions
Kinesics
Study of sounds used in speech in a particular language
Phonology
Linguistic study of morphemes and word construction
Morphology
Vocabulary; all the morphemes in a language and their meanings
Lexicon
Arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences
Syntax
Smallest sound contrast that distinguishes meaning
Phoneme
Study of significant sound contrasts (phonemes) in a language
Phonemics
Study of speech sounds - what people actually say
Phonetics
Theory that different languages produce different patterns of thoughts
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Set of words describing particular domains (foci) of experience
Focal vocabulary
Language’s meaning system
Semantics
Study of lexical (vocabulary) categories and contrasts
Ethnosemantics
Varying one’s speech in different social contexts
Style shifts
A language with “high” (formal) and “low” (informal, familial) dialects
Diglossia
Terms of respect, used to honor people
Honorifics
Rule-governed dialects spoken by some African Americans
African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
Study of languages over time
Historical linguistics
(Linguistic) closely related languages
Subgroups
Languages sharing a common parent language
Daughter languages
Language ancestral to several daughter languages
Protolanguage
