finals Flashcards
The understanding of what sounds (or signs) exist in a language, how they can be combined, and what sequences of sounds relate to specific meanings.
Linguistic Knowledge
The lack of inherent connection between the sound of a word and its meaning. For example, the English word “dog” has no natural relationship to the animal it signifies.
Arbitrary Relation of Form and Meaning
The internalized rules and principles that govern how words are structured, sentences are formed, and meaning is conveyed in a language.
Mental Grammar
The study of the sound systems of a language and the rules governing their combinations.
Phonology
The study of word formation and structure, including how words are built from smaller units.
Morphology
The set of rules that determine the structure and order of words in sentences.
Syntax
The study of meaning in language, examining how words and sentences represent ideas, objects, and relationships.
Semantics
The study of how context influences the interpretation of meaning beyond the literal sense of words.
Pragmatics
Words that mimic natural sounds, such as “buzz” or “splash,” often considered in discussions about the origins of language.
Onomatopoeia
The idea that humans are born with an natural ability to acquire language, supported by the existence of Universal Grammar.
Innateness Hypothesis
The smallest unit of meaning in a language, such as “book” or “books” (composed of “book” + “s” to indicate plural).
Morpheme
A morpheme that can stand alone as a word, e.g., “run” or “happy.”
Free Morpheme
A morpheme that cannot stand alone and must be attached to another morpheme, e.g., prefixes like “un-“ or suffixes like “-ing.”
Bound Morpheme
Morphemes that modify a word’s tense, number, aspect, or gender without changing its core meaning, such as “-s” in “cats.”
Inflectional Morphemes
Morphemes that create new words or change the grammatical category of a word, such as “-ness” in “happiness.”
Derivational Morphemes
The process of combining two or more words to form a new word, e.g., “toothbrush.”
Compounding
The process of adding prefixes, suffixes, or infixes to a base word to form new meanings, e.g., “redo.”
Affixation
The study of how words combine to form phrases and sentences, governed by specific rules.
Syntax
Groups of words that function as a single unit within a sentence, such as a noun phrase or verb phrase.
Constituents
The relationships between sentence elements, such as subject, object, and predicate.
Grammatical Relations:
model introduced by Noam Chomsky, describing how sentences are derived from underlying structures through transformations.
Transformational Grammar
The property of language that allows for infinite embedding of phrases or clauses, such as “The cat [that chased the mouse [that stole the cheese]] ran away.”
Recursion
A situation where a sentence can be interpreted in more than one way due to its structure, e.g., “Visiting relatives can be annoying.”
Syntactic Ambiguity
The study of meaning in language, including word meanings, sentence meanings, and the relationships between them.
Semantics
The literal or primary meaning of a word, as opposed to its connotation.
Denotation
The additional, often subjective or cultural, meanings and associations of a word.
Connotation
The roles that participants play in the context of a sentence, such as agent (doer), theme (receiver), and instrument (means).
Semantic Roles
A single word having multiple related meanings, e.g., “bank” as a financial institution and the side of a river.
Polysemy
Words that have the same spelling or pronunciation but unrelated meanings, e.g., “bat” (animal) and “bat” (used in sports).
Homonymy
Words that have similar meanings, e.g., “big” and “large.”
Synonymy
Words with opposite meanings, e.g., “hot” and “cold.”
Antonymy
A hierarchical relationship where a word’s meaning is included in another, e.g., “sparrow” > “bird.”
Hyponymy
A subfield overlapping with semantics, focusing on meaning in context and how language is used in interaction.
Pragmatics
Variants of a phoneme that occur in different contexts but do not change the meaning, e.g., aspirated [pʰ] in “pat” vs. unaspirated [p] in “spat.”
Allophones
Two words that differ by only one phoneme, e.g., “bat” and “cat.”
Minimal Pair
A standardized system for representing the sounds of spoken language.
IPA
The rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech.
Prosody
The study of how language is used in social contexts, including the effects of context on meaning.
Pragmatics
Actions performed through speech, such as requesting, apologizing, or commanding. Examples include “Can you pass the salt?” (a request).
Speech Acts
Information implied by a speaker but not explicitly stated, e.g., “Some of the guests arrived” implies not all guests have arrived.
Implicature
Words or phrases, like “here,” “now,” or “you,” that require contextual information to convey meaning.
Deixis
Assumptions implied by a statement, e.g., “John’s brother is tall” presupposes that John has a brother.
Presupposition
The process by which humans acquire the ability to perceive, produce, and understand language.
Language Acquisition
The theory that there is a biologically determined period during which language acquisition occurs most easily.
Critical Period Hypothesis
The process by which infants acquire their native language naturally and unconsciously.
First Language Acquisition
The process of learning a language after the first language has been acquired, often involving formal instruction.
Second Language Acquisition (SLA)
A common error in language learning where a rule is applied too broadly, e.g., “goed” instead of “went.”
Overgeneralization
The ability to use two languages fluently.
Bilingualism
The study of the relationship between language and society, including regional, social, and cultural variations.
Sociolinguistics
A regional or social variety of a language, distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary.
Dialect
Alternating between two or more languages or dialects within a conversation or sentence.
Code-Switching
Differences in speech patterns based on regional, social, or ethnic factors.
Language Variation
The study of the relationship between language and the brain.
Neurolinguistics
A region in the frontal lobe involved in language production.
Broca’s Area
A region in the temporal lobe crucial for language comprehension.
Wernicke’s Area
A disorder resulting from brain damage that affects language abilities.
Aphasia
A biologically determined period during which language acquisition is most effective.
Critical Period
The specialization of the brain’s hemispheres for language functions.
Lateralization
Symbols that represent objects or concepts directly.
Pictograms
Symbols representing sounds rather than meanings.
Phonograms
Origins of Language: Language comes from god and if a child is left alone with no other language interactions it will start speaking it.
Divine Source theory
Origins of Language: primitive words could have been imitations of environmental sounds which early people heard around them.
Natural sound source theory
Origins of Language: “Yo-He-Ho” theory is its other name, it says that the first language emerged from humans interacting during physical tasks through grunts and social calls.
Social Interaction source theory
Origins of Language: humans physically evolved to be able to produce speech as is supported by our very speech inclined physical features compared to other animals.
Physical Adaptation source theory
Origins of Language: The brain developed the capacity for speech alongside the capacity to manipulate objects as those two parts of the brain are closely related.
Tool-making source theory
Origins of Language: Humans have always had an innate capacity for speech. There might be a language gene.
Genetic source theory
Word formation:
Invention of a totally new term from trademarks for commercial products or names of people or places.
Coinage
Word formation:
Taking words from other languages.
Borrowing
Word formation:
Putting two words together to create one new word.
Compounding
Word formation:
Taking only the beginning of a word and mixing it with another word.
Blending (ex: gas and alcohol: gasohol)
Word formation:
A word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form.
Clipping
Word Formation:
A word of one type (usually noun) is reduced to a word of another type (usually a verb)
Backformation (Television> to televise)
Word Formation: the function of the word changes but its form stays the same.
Conversion (bottle> (to) bottle)
Word Formation:
New words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words.
Acronyms
Word formation:
Creation of words through affixation
Derivation
First stage of first language acquisition
Babbling
Second stage of first language acquisition
One-word stage
Third stage of first language acquisition
Two-word stage (want cookie)
Fourth stage of first language acquisition, short sentences omitting less critical words. (Mommy go store)
Telegraphic speech
Fifth stage of first language acquisition, robust vocab and grammatical structure.
Full language development
Exposure to language in meaningful context
Input
Noam Chomsky suggests humans are born with a mental framework for learning any language in the theory of__
Universal Grammar
A theoretical construct by Chomsky positing an inborn mechanism in the brain for language learning.
LAD (Language Acquisition Device)
Simplified and exaggerated speech used by caregivers to communicate with infants.
Motherese or Child-directed speech
Infants’ ability to discriminate between sounds, even those not present in their native language.
Phonemic discrimination
The ability of children to quickly link a new word with its meaning after minimal exposure.
Fast Mapping
Using a word too broadly (calling all four-legged animals dogs)
Semantic overextension
A process by which the child uses words’ meanings to infer their syntactic categories.
Semantic bootstrapping
