Chapter 6 - Language Flashcards
What is a language?
A set of sounds and symbols that are used for communication
What is a standard language?
It is a language that is widely distributed and purposefully taught
What are dialects?
Regional variants of the standard language
What is an isogloss?
A geographic boundary within a linguistic feature occurs
What is mutual intelligibility?
It means that two people can understand each other when speaking
What is a dialect chain?
The concept that the further away you go from a dialect, the less mutually intelligible the dialects become
What are language families?
They are groups of languages with shared but distant origins
What are subfamilies?
They are divisions within a language family where commonalities are more definite and origin is more recent
What is an example of a language family?
The Indo-European language family (english)
What is a sound shift?
Changes in a word across subfamilies (latta for milk in Latin, lait in French)
What is proto-indo-european?
The concept of a language that preceded indo-european that was the hearth of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit
What is backward reconstruction?
A technique that tracks sound shifts back to the original language
What is an extinct language?
A language without any native speakers
What is deep reconstruction?
Reconstructing extinct languages to find the language that preceded it
What is the Nostratic language?
The language that preceded proto-indo-european
What is language divergence?
The lack of interaction between speakers of a language that breaks the language into dialects and then eventually distinct languages
What is language convergence?
The collapsing of two languages into one due to interaction
Where do researchers believe that proto-indo-european originated from?
Around the Black Sea
What is the Renfrew Hypothesis?
Renfrew’s idea that proto-indo-european originated from Turkey, and then diffused into many families
What is conquest theory?
The theory of how speakers of proto-indo-european spread the language into Europe through conquest on horseback
What is the dispersal hypothesis?
The theory that indo-european languages were carried into Southwest Asia, and then into the Balkans
What are the three major subfamilies of European language?
Germanic (German, English, Danish), Romance (French, Spanish, Italian), and Slavic (Russian, Polish, Czech)
What is a lingua franca?
A language used among speakers of different languages for the purpose of trade (frankish traders combining their language with Greek, Spanish, etc for the purpose of trading). A modern example would be Swahili
What is a pidgin language?
When people combine parts of languages in a simplified structure and vocabulary
What is a Creole language?
A developed pidgin language that has become a native language (African slaves mixed their native languages with English, French to create Creole)
What is a monolingual state?
A state where only one language is spoken (Japan, Poland)
What is a multilingual state?
A state where more than one language is spoken (Belgium, Canada)
What is a global language?
The common language of trade around the world
What is a toponym?
The name of a place, can be of many categories that help define a place (Rocky Mountains being descriptive, Jefferson City being possessive)
What can toponyms reveal about a place?
French toponyms in Louisiana can reveal migration flows, Welsh toponyms in Pennsylvania, etc
How does changing the toponym change a place?
It can wipe out past history and bring in a new history
Why do countries adopt official languages?
Adopted by countries with linguistic fragmentation to tie people together (African countries adopting English, French, Portuguese)
