File 1.0-1.4: Introduction (F)

Question 1

linguistic competence

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

linguistic performance

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

performance errors

Answer 3

Mistakes you make while using your linguistic performance,
Textbook def: Errors in language production or
comprehension, including hesitations and slips of the tongue.

Question 4

What are the key elements in any communication system (by Shannon and Weaver, 1949)?

Answer 4

• an information source
• a transmitter
• a signal
• a receiver
• a destination

Question 5

What is the order in the speech communication chain?

Answer 5

• 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

Question 6

noise

Answer 6

Interference in a chain.

Question 7

lexicon

Answer 7

A collection of all the words that you know, what functions they serve, pronunciation, and how they’re related to other words.

Question 8

mental grammer

Answer 8

All the knowledge you have of the grammatical rules in your language.

Question 9

‘rule’ in languages

Answer 9

A statement of patterns that occurs in language.

Question 10

descriptive grammars

Answer 10

Collections of generalizations of language (sofa=couch, etc.).

Question 11

Which diffferent meanings does the term ‘grammar’ have?

Answer 11

• 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”.

Question 12

prescriptive grammar

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

design features

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

What are the nine design features?

Answer 14

1 Mode of communication
2 Semanticity
3 Pragmatic function
4 Interchangeability
5 Cultural Transmission
6 Arbitrariness
7 Discreteness
8 Displacement
9 Productivity

Question 15

Which design features do all communication systems share?

Answer 15

Mode of communication, semanticity, and pragmatic function

Question 16

Which design features are only shared by human languages?

Answer 16

Displacement and productivity

Question 17

mode of communication

Answer 17

How the messages are transmitted and received (voices or gestures).

Question 18

semanticity

Answer 18

Requiring all signals in a communication system to have a meaning or function.

Question 19

pragmatic function

Answer 19

Communication systems must serve some useful purpose. I.e. influencing others, to stay alive, etc.

Question 20

interchangeability

Answer 20

Each individual is able to both transmit and receive messages and comprehend the messages of others (by listening or watching).

Question 21

cultural transmission

Answer 21

It means there are features of the language that we can only acquire through communicative interaction with other users of the system.

Question 22

arbitrariness

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

linguistic sign

Answer 23

The combination of a form and meaning.

Question 24

form of a word

Answer 24

The sound of a word, the word order that gives the word a specific sound.

Question 25

arbitrary convention

Answer 25

A certain group of sounds goes with a particular meaning.

Question 26

nonarbitrariness

Answer 26

The connection between form and meaning is direct, it is derivable from laws of nature.

Question 27

onomatoeia

Answer 27

Are words that are imitative of natural sounds or have meanings that are associated with such sounds of nature.

Question 28

sound symbolism

Answer 28

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.

Question 29

Why is sound symbolism a counterexample to arbitrariness?

Answer 29

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.

Question 30

iconicity

Answer 30

The correspondence between form and meaning.

Question 31

discreteness

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

displacement

Answer 32

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.

Question 33

productivity

Answer 33

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.

Question 34

In what way do discreteness and productivity differ?

Answer 34

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!).

Question 35

natural language

Answer 35

A language that has naturally evolved in a speech community (and is not for example made up for the purpose of a book).

Question 36

constructed language

Answer 36

A language that has specifically been invented by a human that may or may not imitate all thee properties of a natural language.