Foundations Of Linguistics Flashcards
What is the scientific study of languages?
Linguistics
ESOL teachers need?
A basic understanding of linguistic theory and its cultural implications to understand how students aquire language
Phonetics is the study of?
The production of sounds in speech
Phonology …?
Looks at the sounds and patterns of particular languages.
Intonation…?
Is the way a voice rises and falls in speech
Stress is..?
Is emphasis places on syllables or words
Morpheme is?
The smallest unit of meaning in a language
The study of how morphemes are combined
To make words is called morphology
Syntax eamines how words are
Constructed into phrases or sentences
Semantics is..
The study of meaning in language
In order to study and explain how humans produce sounds , linguists have developed?
A system of transcription, a way to visually represent sounds/ example International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
ESOL teachers need to have?
An understanding of the transcriptions for the sounds used in American English
To help ESOL students improve their pronunciation it is important to understand..
The concepts of voiced or voiceless
Voice sounds are
Made by vibrating the vocal chords
Voiceless sounds are made
Without vibrating the vocal chords
The P and b sounds are made at
The same place of articulation
But the b sound is voiced while
The p sound is not
One can determine whether a consonant is voiced or voiceless by
Putting a hand to his or her throat while making the sound
If voiced fhe throat will
Vibrate
Ithe s sound is voiceless but the z sound. Is voiced it .
Should make the throat vibrate
Place of articulation is the point where
Two speech organs come together to make a sound.
An example is top and bototm lips coming together to produce
The labial consonant sound of the letter m
Nasalization in which air comes through the nose when making
A sound such as n
Aspiration is a sound made with a burst of air out of the mouth as in the
h in hope
Assimilation occurs when a speech sound changes due
To the influence of nearby sounds
A diphthong is the sound made when one vowel blends into another vowel sound in one syllable
Like the ou sound in loud
Consonant clusters, groups of two or more consonants, as pl in place nt, in bent ,and sp in whisper
Pose a similar challenge
Epenthesis is inserting an additional sound in the middle of the word like
Puh-lace for place
For example voicing occurs when a voiceless consonant changes to a voiced consonant because of nearby sounds
The f in reefs is unvoiced so the s sound is also unvoiced. However the v in leaves is voiced so the s is also voiced.
Elision occurs when sounds are omitted from the pronunciation of a word because
It usually makes it easier to use it in everyday speech. Example mac and cheese becomes ma n cheese
Metathesis occurs when sounds are re-arranged in a word. Like
When iron is pronounced iern
Intonation is realted to pitch
Pitch as in the way an English speaker’s voice rises at the end of a question
Stress can be seen as more rhythmic:
Stressed syllables or words are louder and longer than unstressed syllables
Vowel reduction is the shortening of a vowel sounds
This occurs with many unstressed vowels in English
The most common example of vowel reduction is the
Schwa sound as in as in. A, as in hundred, again, amazing
Native english speakers find that intonation and stress come
Naturally to them. English learners may not hear these things as easily
Morphology is the study of word forms and
Their component parts.
A word is considerd the smallest unit of language that can
Stand on its own
Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in language.
An example is the word player. Play is a word thsf can stand on its own. Two morphemes in player
Morphology breaks down into morpheme types.
A bound morpheme ( er) in player and free morpheme like play in player
Inflection morphemes can serve to make a word plural
Girl and girls
Derivational morphemes change
A words meaning (run/rerun) or its part of speech (drink/drinkabable)
A stem/root is a base word, often a free morpheme
To which other morphemes can be added.
An affix( either a prefix or suffix) is a bound morpheme that can be added to a root word to change
Its meaning, grammatical function, tense, case, or gender.
Inflection morphemes are bound morphemes that do not greatly
Alter the meaning or the part of speech of a word, whereas derivational morphemes create a word that has a new meaning or part of speech
Derivational morphemes create a word that has
A new meaning or part of speech
Syntax examines how words are
Arranged into phrases and sentences
Transformational
Grammar turned the focus away from semiotics and meaning
Toward the system of rules that proper encompasses sentence construction.
Semantics, or the study of meaning in language looks at how
Words are put together to create meaning.
Connotation is the emotional association of a word
While denotation is a word’s actual dictionary definition.
An idiom is a group of words whose meaning cannot be deduced from the meaning of the individual words in the group;
Put together, the word take on a new meaning
To master a language a non-native speaker must learn much more then the basic rules of grammar:
Indeed, they must have an understanding of the significant relationship between culture and language
In pragmatics, study focuses on utterances, speech acts of one of more words
That contain a single idea and are surrounded on both sides by silence
Sociolinguistics, the study of language and its relation to society and culture,
Is significant because of its influence on language policy.
Language policy is the set of actions a government takes to regulate what language is/are spoken
In a given country
Regional and social dialects are language variations that are common to the people
In a certain region or social group
A pidgin language,
A grammatically simplified mode of communication that uses elements if botj languages( ex. Gullah)
