Foundations Of Linguistics Flashcards
Phonetics
The study of individual sounds in spoken languages
Phonology
The study of how individual sounds are combined into specific patterns
Morphology
The study of the internal of words
Syntax
The study of how words group together to make sentences
Semantics
The study of meanings of words and sentences
Pragmatics
Study of meanings of words and sentences in a larger social context
IPA
A standardized system for representing speech sounds with symbols
Vowel inventory
The number of distinct vowel sounds in a particular language
Intonation
The use of pitch to convey meaning across a sentence
Phone
Any distinct speech sound, regardless of whether it has meaning in a particular language. Represented in square brackets.
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound that can differentiate meaning in a specific language.represented in lashes
Allophone
Variations of a single phoneme that do not change the meaning of a word
Aspiration
A puff of air that accompanies the pronunciation of certain consonants like in “team”
Voiceless stops
Consonants produced without vibrating, the vocal cords, such as/P/,/T/and/K/
Assimilation
A phonological process where a sound becomes more similar to a neighboring sound for ease of pronunciation (ex. Inpatient becomes iMpatient)
Dissimilation
A phonological process were a sound becomes less like a neighboring sound to make speech clearer or more distinct (ex. Water and “wader”)
Insertion (Epenthesis)
Adding an extra sound to a word to make it easier to pronounce
Deletion (Elision)
Omitting a sound from a word often for brevity
Metathesis
Switching of sounds within a word (ask becomes aks)
Retroflex
A sound produced by curling the tongue back towards the roof of the mouth
Allophonic Rule
A linguistic rule, describing when and where allophones of a phoneme occur within a language
Word boundary (#Mark)
A notation used in phonological rules to indicate the beginning or end of a word
Syllable
A unit of organization for sounds within a word typically containing a vowel sound
Contraction
A form of deletion were sounds are omitted to shorten a word or phrase
Natural classes
Groups of sounds that share certain features like voiceless stops
Reflexivity
The ability to use language to talk about language itself
Duality of patterning
The idea that language exist at two levels: individual forms (like sounds) and their combinations to create meaning
Linguistics
The study of language and its structure
Consonants
Speech sounds made by closing the vocal tract in someway
Vowels
Speech sounds made by changing the shape of the vocal tract, but leaving it open
Pulmonic consonants
Continents made with airflow to ghe lungs
Non-pulmonic consonant
Consonants produced without lung air flow such as clicks, ejectives and implosive
Co-articulated consonant
Sounds produced with constrictions in two places in the vocal tract
Engma
A velar nasal sound as in sing or hunger
Word
A basic unit of meaning in language typically consisting of one or more morphemes
Lexeme
A unit of meaning in a language similar to a dictionary entry
Lexicon
A language is complete set of Lexemes, essentially its dictionary
Morpheme
The smallest unit of meaning in a language
Free morpheme
A morpheme that can stand alone as a word
Bound morpheme
A morpheme that cannot stand alone and must be attached to a free morpheme
Compound
A word formed by combining two or more free morphemes
Affix
A morpheme that attaches to a route or base word to change its meaning
Prefix
An affix that attaches to the beginning of a word
Suffix
An affix that attaches to the end of a word
Infix
And affix inserted into the middle of a word
Circumfix
An affix that attaches to both the beginning and end of a word
Fusional morphology
A type of morphology where a single affix expresses multiple grammatical meanings
Suppletion
A process where an entirely different form of a word is used instead of a regular morphological transformation (ex. Go and went rather than go and had gone)
Root
The core part of a word that carries the primary meaning
Stem
The base form of a word often with one or more morphemes attached to it
Inflection
The process of modifying a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, aspect, voice, person, number, gender, or case.
Metamorphosis
The transformation or modification of words in linguistics
Vowel Alteration
A change in the vowels of a root to convey grammatical meaning (EX. Foot to feet or sing to sang).
Compound Noun
A noun made by combining two or more nouns
Subject
The part of a sentence that performs the action or is described
Verb
A word that describes an action occurrence or state of being
Object
The entity that is acted upon in a sentence
Word Order
The sequence in which words are arranged to form sentences in a language (EX. SOV, SVO, VSO).
Constituent
A closely related subgroup of words that form a part of a sentence
Cleft Construction
A sentence structure used to emphasize a particular part of a sentence (EX. “It’s Taylor, who sees the rabbit “)
Substitution Test
A method to identify constituents by replacing a group of words with a single word or phrase
Predicate
The part of a sentence or clause that expresses an action or state of being
Recursive
A property of language where structures can be embedded within similar structures indefinitely
Preposition
A word that shows the relationship of a noun phrase to the rest of the sentences ( EX. “On, “”with, “”inside “)
Head
The central or most important word in a phrase, which determines the grammatical category and meaning of the entire phrase.
Adjective
A word that modifies a noun by describing a quality or characteristic
Adverb
A word that modifies a verb adjective or other adverb, often indicating manner time or degree
Pronoun
A word that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase
Hyponym
A specific term within a broader category (EX. Red as a type of color)
Hypernym
A general term that includes more specific terms (EX. Animal is a category for rabbit.)
Semantic Space
How different languages organized and categorize meaning
Polysemy
A single word having multiple meanings (EX. Bank as a river bank or a financial institution.)
Content words
Words with clearer meanings that can be described or visualized (X. Happiness)
Function words
Words that serve grammatical purposes rather than carrying specific meanings (EX. The, of)
