Finals Flashcards
What is language
-language is a system humans use for complex communication
what is a langue
a language's rules abstract internal arrangement of rules understood by a social group internal unconscious
what is parole
a language’s rules in action
Saussurre created
structuralism
structuralism
seeks to find the underlying cognitive system of language which no speakers knows completely, as each knows different parts
Saussurre’s innovations
- study of spoken language
- synchronic vs diachronic
- still eurocentric
synchronic
studying at one point in time
diachronic
studying changes over time
innovations of the Prague linguistic circle
- phonology distinct from phonetics
- explored the relationship of functional units of language
- literary and eurocentric bias
- still viewed languages as better or worse
- were teachers
members of the Prague linguistic circle
- Roman Jakobson
- Vile(accent mark)n Mathesius
- Nikolai Trubetzkovy
members of the american anthropologists
- Franz Boas
- Edward Sapir
- Leonard Bloomfield
innovations of the american antrhopologists
-viewed languages descriptively
-all languages worthy of study
-seen as a part of a larger culture
-did not judge speech communities
-
innovations of Chomsky
- overturned structuralism
- universal grammar
- generative grammar
- hierarchy
- resplit language from culture
- viewed analytically and theoretically
- grammar takes primacy
universal grammar
-all humans have basic skill for learning language
generative grammar
syntax adheres to certain principles and parameters
hierarchy
a logical structure across different language classes as a hierarchy of classes of formal classes
phonetics
the study of human sounds themselves ex. voiceless bilabial sop /p/
phonology
how sounds have value and context in a language system ex. the liquid consonant in Japanese /r/ which can be realized as lateral or rhotic
syntax
the study of sentence structures and structure building processes ex. the analysis of a sentence’s structural ambiguity
morphology
the study of words, their formation, and how they interact ex. the breakdown of a compound to analyze lexical ambiguity
consonant
a sound produced by the obstruction of the vocal tract ex. /s/
vowel
a sound produced with an unobstructed vocal tract ex. /o/
inflection
the addition to a morpheme to add grammatical information ex. adding -ed to jump in English to change the tense
derivation
morphemes are added to create new lexical items ex. adding un- to happy in English to create unhappy
phonemes
distinct sounds (in the phonological sense) in a language system that may or may not be made up of multiple phones as they are purely phonological, ex. /d/ in English
allophone
two or more distinct phonetic phones treated as a single phonological phoneme ex. /d/ in English which includes the allophones /d/ and /r/ (curved)
morpheme
the smallest unit of meaning in a language ex. the morpheme /cat/ in English
allomorphs
are variants of a morpheme which do not change meaning ex. /hat/ and /hats/ in English
content morphemes
have a specific meaning such as /mad/ in English
functional morphemes
serve a grammatical purpose such as -ed in English indicating the past tense or -s indicating the plural
free morphemes
morphemes which can stand on their own or can show up with other lexemes ex. /city/ in English
bound morphemes
are always part of a larger word ex. -/s/ in English as a suffix in English indicating the plural
lexical ambiguity
the ability of a lexical item to have multiple meanings ex. pack in English which has multiple meanings
structural ambiguity
the ability of words based on structure to be ambiguous ex. Roger loves small horse and small dogs can be read as roger loving small horses and small dogs or small horses and dogs in English
What does it mean to analyze language without judgment?
avoid all personal biases and be objective when studying a language
- clinically and critically analyze
- can’t judge speech community
- look at it in as much of a vacuum as possible, free of personal feelings or opinions for best and most accurate analysis of a language
universal grammar (expand)
- by chomsky
- all normal humans have some kind of innate linguistic capacity, which is specifically referring to the ability of all normal humans to acquire grammar
- thus hard wired mental faculty in the brain which is must be genetically determined
- treated as a natural skill of all normal humans like sight
- implies a universal grammar which provides a simple framework and set of limitations for all human languages
recursion
- the embedding of a structure (sentence) within a structure of the same type ad infinitum
- the grammar of a language must generate infinitely many sentences by providing an explicit generative grammar via rules for “generating” an infinite number of grammatical sentences
ex. Mark is happy, Mark, from down the street, is happy, Mark, from down the street, is happy you came etc.
Chomsky’s competence
- internal mental state constituting grammar
- idealized capacity located internally
- idealized “knowing” what to do
- relative intimacy, variability, potential transient nature
- more personal approach to understanding a language’s rule system
- unconscious understanding of language
onset
the consonant sound or sounds at the beginning of a syllable, occurring before the nucleus (label each part as consonant or vowel)
rhyme
the nucleus and coda
nucleus
the vowel in the middle of a syllable (label each part as consonant or vowel)
feet
comprise one or more syllables
the rhythmic structure of the word and are the units that allow us to describe stress patterns.
strong or weak
coda
the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus (label each part as consonant or vowel)
key qualities which oppose prescriptivism to descripitvism
- it is not unconscious
- it is a style, not grammar
use of non-standard dialect is
a social signal
prestige has nothing to do
with its linguistic properties example /r/ insertion
underlying form
- has complimentary, systemic “elsewhere distribution”
- to find, create create competing theories on surface form and use the rule that allows “no change” in the broadest range of contexts
compound ex
kill switch
affixation ex
pre-
zero derivation ex
walk (as a noun and verb)
blending ex
spork
clipping ex
fan from fanatic
back formation ex
edit from editor, burgle from burglar
stress shift
insult N (SW) insult V (WS)
pragmatics
meanings that accompany language but don’t affect the truth conditions of what is said
- conventional meaning
- extralinguistic knowledge
semantics
literal meanings of words based on truth conditions
-
truth conditional / truth
sentence can be built from the meanings of its parts and the way they combine
does the sentence express a true proposition or a false one
felicity
tests if the sentence is appropriate and truthful in context
-Is the sentence appropriate in context?
grammaticality
tests if the sentence violates the structure of the language
-does the sentence violate the structures of a language?
mass nouns
refer to substances or uncountable masses, can be preceded by “a” or “an”, need a unit for counting (four pieces of furniture), can be bare nouns (I like coffee)
count nouns
countable items
three important elements of tense and aspect
topic time -time in which you are talking about an event
utterance time-
event time -run time of an event
perfective
event time inside of topic time
ending in -ing
imperfective
not ending in -ing
event time outside of time topic time
atelic
no known end point
can use for (time length)
telic
known end point
can be used with in phrases (within a specific length of time)
cumulative
x=x= more x (sand)
quantized
part of x does not = x (cartridge)
ambiguous
could be either (paint)
entailment
one proposition’s truth means that another proposition must be true
presupposition
one proposition’s truth depends on the the truth of another proposition
leading question
answering it implies that the asker’s presupposition is true
implicature
a proposition’s truth is suggested or implied by the truth of another proposition, different than entailment because it is not necessarily true
cooperative principle
both or all speakers in a conversation are expected to follow gricean maxims
gricean maxims
quantity- be as informative as necessary and no more
quality- tell only what you know to be true
manner- be clear, concise, and unambiguous
faculty of language
the broad and narrow system that humans use to speak
innate cognitive devices
goal of ape language experiments
are apes capable of acquiring language and understanding the structure rather than just memorizing it
counter example to sapir-whorf
- whorf thought they had no words for time and therefore no concept of it
- do have words for time just think of it differently
human language unique due to
- displacement
- productive and creative
- arbitrary
- infinite meanings
- recursivity
parts of syntax
-P=phrase N-= Noun D-=determiner V-=verb A-=Adjective Adv-=Adverb Aux= Auxiliary Verb Comp-Conjunction