chap 1 what is L

Question 1

American Sign Language (ASL)

Answer 1

The sign language used by the deaf community in the United States.

Question 2

arbitrary

Answer 2

Describes the property of language, including sign language, whereby there is no natural or intrinsic relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.

Question 3

bird song

Answer 3

A complex pattern of notes used to mark territory and to attract mates.

Question 4

birdcall

Answer 4

One or more short notes that convey messages associated with the immediate environment, such as danger, feeding, nesting, and flocking.

Question 5

conventional

Answer 5

The agreed-on, although generally arbitrary, relationship between the form and meaning of words.

Question 6

creativity

Answer 6

Speakers’ ability to combine the finite number of linguistic units of their language to produce and understand an infinite range of novel sentences.

Question 7

critical period

Answer 7

The time between early childhood and puberty during which a child can acquire a native language easily, swiftly, and without external intervention. After this period, the acquisition of the grammar is difficult and, for some individuals, never fully achieved.

Question 8

descriptive grammar

Answer 8

A linguist’s description or model of the mental grammar, including the units, structures, and rules. An explicit statement of what speakers know about their language.

Question 9

discreteness

Answer 9

A fundamental property of human language in which larger linguistic units are perceived to be composed of smaller linguistic units: e.g., cat is perceived as the phonemes /k/, /æ/, /t/; the cat is perceived as the and cat.

Question 10

form

Answer 10

The phonological or gestural representation of a morpheme or word

Question 11

gloss

Answer 11

A word in one language given to express the meaning of a word in another language: e.g., ‘house’ is the English gloss for the French word maison.

Question 12

grammar

Answer 12

The mental representation of a speaker’s linguistic competence; what a speaker knows about a language, including its phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexicon. A linguistic description of a speaker’s mental grammar.

Question 13

grammatical

Answer 13

Describes a well-formed sequence of words, one conforming to rules of syntax.

Question 14

lexicon

Answer 14

The component of the grammar containing speakers’ knowledge about morphemes and words; a speaker’s mental dictionary.

Question 15

linguistic competence

Answer 15

The knowledge of a language represented by the mental grammar that accounts for speakers’ linguistic ability and creativity. For the most part, linguistic competence is unconscious knowledge.

Question 16

linguistic determinism

Answer 16

The strongest form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that the language we speak establishes how we perceive and think about the world.

Question 17

linguistic performance

Answer 17

The use of linguistic competence in the production and comprehension of language; behavior as distinguished from linguistic knowledge: e.g., linguistic competence permits one-million-word sentences, but linguistic performance prevents this from happening.

Question 18

linguistic relativism

Answer 18

A weaker form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that different languages encode different categories, and that speakers of different languages therefore think about the world in different ways. For example, speakers of languages that have fewer color words will be less sensitive to gradations of color.

Question 19

linguistic theory

Answer 19

A theory of the principles that characterize all human languages

Question 20

meaning

Answer 20

The conceptual or semantic aspect of a sign or utterance that permits us to comprehend the message being conveyed. Expressions in language generally have both form—pronunciation or gesture—and meaning.

Question 21

mental grammar

Answer 21

The internalized grammar that a descriptive grammar attempts to model.

Question 22

morphology

Answer 22

The study of the structure of words; the component of the grammar that includes the rules of word formation.

Question 23

onomatopoeic

Answer 23

Words whose pronunciations suggest their meanings: e.g., meow, buzz.

Question 24

phonology

Answer 24

The sound system of a language; the component of a grammar that includes the inventory of sounds (phonetic and phonemic units) and rules for their combination and pronunciation; the study of the sound systems of all languages.

Question 25

prescriptive grammar

Answer 25

Rules of grammar brought about by grammarians’ attempts to legislate what speakers’ grammatical rules should be, rather than what they are.

Question 26

prestige dialect

Answer 26

The dialect usually spoken by people in positions of power, and the one deemed correct by prescriptive grammarians: e.g., RP (received pronunciation) (British) English, the dialect spoken by the English royal family.

Question 27

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 27

The proposition that the structure of a language influences how its speakers perceive the world around them. It is often presented in its weak form, linguistic relativism, and its strong form, linguistic determinism.

Question 28

semantics

Answer 28

The study of the linguistic meanings of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences.

Question 29

slip of the tongue

Answer 29

An involuntary deviation of an intended utterance. Also called a speech error.

Question 30

sound symbolism

Answer 30

The notion that certain sound combinations occur in semantically similar words: e.g., gl in gleam, glisten, glitter, which all relate to vision.

Question 31

standard

Answer 31

The dialect (regional or social) considered to be the norm

Question 32

syntax

Answer 32

The rules of sentence formation; the component of the mental grammar that represents speakers’ knowledge of the structure of phrases and sentences.

Question 33

teaching grammar

Answer 33

A set of language rules written to help speakers learn a foreign language or a different dialect of their language.

Question 34

ungrammatical

Answer 34

Describes structures that fail to conform to the rules of grammar.

Question 35

Universal Grammar

Answer 35

The innate principles and properties that pertain to the grammars of all human languages.