Final Exam (12/8) Flashcards
who is the father of modern linguistics?
Ferdinand de Saussure
what is the signifier?
the sequence of sounds and letters of a sign.
what is the signified?
the image or concept associated with a sign.
what type of sign is a literal representation (like a picture of a cat)?
icon
what type of sign implies a concept and often relies on context (like a paw print)?
index
what type of sign is learned and has an arbitrary relationship with the signified (like the word ‘cat’)?
symbol
what type of language are onomatopoeias?
iconic
what is the general and universal meaning of something?
denotation
what is the more personal meaning of something?
connotation
what is the skill of discussing past, future, and hypothetical that animals cannot do?
displacement
what is the process in which the output can become the input?
recursion
human language has two levels of combining–sounds into words and words into phrases–what is this called?
duality of patterning
what is enforced by editors, teachers, dictionaries, language mavens, etc., and is based in societal norms?
standardization
when two people from different language can communities can understand each other, what is it?
mutual intelligibility
the unconscious knowledge we have about our language community (our competence)
descriptive rules
these tell us what we should or shouldn’t do in our language, such as avoiding double negatives
prescriptive rules
what is the study of how sounds are produced and perceived?
phonetics
what is the study of patterns and rules involved in the sound system?
phonology
what are sounds described and classified by their shared features into?
natural class
p, t, and k are all what?
voiceless stops
what is the abstract, mental category of sounds?
phonemes
what is the subcategory of phonemes that are definite and concrete?
allophones
what is a set of words that differ by one sound in the same position?
minimal pair
sounds that are not separate phonemes and will never be found where another occurs are in what?
complementary distribution
a sound becoming more similar to the surrounding sounds is what?
assimilation
the process of sounds being omitted from words is what?
deletion
the process where sounds are added to words is what?
insertion
the process of sounds reversing their order is what?
metathesis
what is the study of word structure?
morphology
what is the smallest unit of language with meaning or function?
morpheme
these morphemes can function as their own word.
free
these morphemes cannot function as their own word.
bound
this language type is morphologically complex and is made of mostly bound morphemes.
synthetic
this language type is easier to dissect as it is mostly made of free morphemes.
analytic
these morphemes never change a word’s grammatical category and are furthest from the root.
inflectional
these morphemes often change a word’s grammatical category and alter the meaning of the root.
derivational
the process of forming a new word by combining 2 free morphemes
compounding
the process of forming a new word by adding an affix (prefix or suffix)
affixation
the process of forming a new word by creating an acronym that cannot be said as a word
alphabetization
the process of forming a new word by taking a small piece from a larger word (limo from limousine)
clipping
the process of forming a new word by removing an affix (beg from beggar)
backformation
the process of forming a new word by joining two or more words where at least one is clipped
blending
the process of forming a new word when it can be used interchangeably between functions
shifting (or conversion)
the process of forming a new word when a company creates a brand name
coinage
the process of forming a new word by taking them from another language
borrowing
usually short-lived words used in place of the standard for humor and raciness
slang
what class of words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs?
open
what class of words are prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, etc.?
closed
these words define a relationship between elements like time, location, direction, etc.
prepositions
these words connect words, phrases, and clauses
conjunctions
these words stand in for noun phrases
pronouns
these words introduce clauses that function as a noun phrase
complementizers
these words introduce and create noun phrases
determiners
these words occur before main verbs
auxiliary verbs
clauses are made of a ___ and a ___
subject and predicate
what is the entity under discussion in a clause?
subject
what is being said about the entity in a clause?
predicate
these clauses can be punctuated as a normal sentence; must have tense and a subject, and cannot start with SCONJ, RP, or COMP
independent
these clauses modify sentences or word phrases; give reasons
adverbial
these clauses modify nouns
relative
these clauses act as a noun phrase
nominal
what is a word or group of words that behaves as a unit called?
constituent
what are the two ways to test for constituency?
substitution and movement
these verbs have a direct object with the verb phrase
transitive
these verbs have no direct object, predicate nominative, or predicate adjective in the verb phrase
intransitive
these verbs have a predicate adjective or nominative in the verb phrase that give a property to the subject
linking
words that are conceptually related
lexical fields
these are superordinate to their subcategories
hypernym
“part of” relation
meronymy
words meaning the same thing
synonyms
words that mean the opposite of each other
antonyms
antonyms that are on a spectrum, like hot and cold
gradeable
antonyms that have no in between, like dead and alive
complementary
antonyms where the opposite word implies the other, like husband and wife
converse
similar word form but distinct, unrelated meaning
homonymy
type of homonyms that sound the same but mean different things
homophones
type of homonyms that sound different and are spelled the same but mean different things
homographs
who noticed similarities between languages in the 18th century?
Sir William Jones
who invented the printing press?
William Caxton
what did Caxton first publish?
Canterbury Tales
