File 1.0-1.4: Introduction (F) Flashcards
linguistic competence
The hidden part of learning languages, how can we pick it up so fast?
Textbook definition: What we know when we know a language; the unconscious knowledge that a speaker has about her or his native language.
linguistic performance
What we do with our linguistic competence is our performance of the language. Performance of linguistics (not conscious of how it works though).
Textbook def: The observable use of language. The actualization of one’s linguistic competence.
performance errors
Mistakes you make while using your linguistic performance,
Textbook def: Errors in language production or
comprehension, including hesitations and slips of the tongue.
What are the key elements in any communication system (by Shannon and Weaver, 1949)?
- an information source
- a transmitter
- a signal
- a receiver
- a destination
What is the order in the speech communication chain?
- Think about it
- Pick out words
- Put the words together
- How to pronounce it?
- Send pronunciation to vocal anatomy
- Speak
- Perceive
- Decode: listener interprets words
- Connect: listener receives communication idea
noise
Interference in a chain.
lexicon
A collection of all the words that you know, what functions they serve, pronunciation, and how they’re related to other words.
mental grammer
All the knowledge you have of the grammatical rules in your language.
‘rule’ in languages
A statement of patterns that occurs in language.
descriptive grammars
Collections of generalizations of language (sofa=couch, etc.).
Which diffferent meanings does the term ‘grammar’ have?
- Mental grammar: that which linguists study
- Grammar of a language: the rules of a language
- Prescriptive grammar: the standards society has for the way language is “correct” and “proper”.
prescriptive grammar
The standards society has for the way language is “correct” and “proper”.
Textbook def: A set of rules designed to give instructions
regarding the socially embedded notion of the “correct” or “proper”
way to speak or write.
design features
They are the descriptive characteristics of language, made up by Hockett.
Extra def: Each design feature is a condition necessary for a communication system to be considered language.
What are the nine design features?
1 Mode of communication 2 Semanticity 3 Pragmatic function 4 Interchangeability 5 Cultural Transmission 6 Arbitrariness 7 Discreteness 8 Displacement 9 Productivity
Which design features do all communication systems share?
Mode of communication, semanticity, and pragmatic function
Which design features are only shared by human languages?
Displacement and productivity
mode of communication
How the messages are transmitted and received (voices or gestures).
semanticity
Requiring all signals in a communication system to have a meaning or function.
pragmatic function
Communication systems must serve some useful purpose. I.e. influencing others, to stay alive, etc.
interchangeability
Each individual is able to both transmit and receive messages and comprehend the messages of others (by listening or watching).
cultural transmission
It means there are features of the language that we can only acquire through communicative interaction with other users of the system.
arbitrariness
Textbook def: In relation to language, refers to the fact that a word’s meaning is not predictable from its linguistic form, nor is its form dictated by its meaning.
linguistic sign
The combination of a form and meaning.
form of a word
The sound of a word, the word order that gives the word a specific sound.
arbitrary convention
A certain group of sounds goes with a particular meaning.
nonarbitrariness
The connection between form and meaning is direct, it is derivable from laws of nature.
onomatoeia
Are words that are imitative of natural sounds or have meanings that are associated with such sounds of nature.
sound symbolism
Some sounds are associated with a certain meaning and have therefore in multiple languages the same meaning.
Textbook def: Certain sounds occur in words not by virtue of being directly imitative of some sound but rather simply by being evocative of a particular meaning.
Example: /i/ is associated with little because of the high frequency and is in Spanish as well as English often in words associated to little or small.
Why is sound symbolism a counterexample to arbitrariness?
Arbitrariness is about how someone decided something to give this that name (say chair). Sound symbolism makes it less random, because there is a certain association with the letter and this is why ‘little’ is ‘little’ and it isn’t something else.
iconicity
The correspondence between form and meaning.
discreteness
How multiple letters can form a word.
Textbook def: The property of communication systems by which complex messages may be built up out of smaller parts.
displacement
Displacement is the ability of a language to communicate about things, actions, and ideas that are not present in space or time while speakers are
communicating.
Example: Talking about the color red while there is nothing red withing sight, or unicorns since they don’t exist.
productivity
We are able to create new words (or messages) out of the different units (letters) that exist in the language.
Textbook def: Productivity refers to a language’s capacity for novel messages to be built up out of discrete units.
Def 2: The capacity of a communication system
(unique to human language) for novel messages built out of discrete units to be produced and understood.
In what way do discreteness and productivity differ?
Discreteness is about how sounds (letters) can form a new word. Productivity is about how new messages can be created by using recombinable units (words and not letters!).
natural language
A language that has naturally evolved in a speech community (and is not for example made up for the purpose of a book).
constructed language
A language that has specifically been invented by a human that may or may not imitate all thee properties of a natural language.
