Intro To Linguistics

Question 1

What are the 5 properties/design features of language?

Answer 1

Displacement, Arbitrariness, Productivity, Cultural Transmission, and Double Articulation

Question 2

How would you describe DISPLACEMENT?

Answer 2

The ability to refer to events (real or imagined) displaced in space or time (past and future).

Question 3

What does Arbitrariness mean?

Answer 3

The meaning of linguistic signs is not predictable from it’s word form, nor is the word form dictated by its meaning or function.

Question 4

Define PRODUCTIVITY

Answer 4

The fact that humans can produce an infinite number of novel utterances.

Question 5

What does CULTURAL TRANSMISSION mean?

Answer 5

The fact that language is passed on culturally and socially. Babies must be interactively exposed to language in order to acquire it. Children will learn any language they are exposed to.

Question 6

How would you define DOUBLE ARTICULATION?

Answer 6

There are 2 levels to language: sound and meaning.

Individual sounds have no significance -> i.e. [p], [a]

Sounds sequenced have meaning -> [p] + [a] + [t] = [pat].

Question 7

What are some other forms of human communication?

Answer 7

Prevarication and Reflexivity

Question 8

What is PREVARICATION?

Answer 8

Language can be false and used to lie or deceive.

Question 9

What is reflexivity?

Answer 9

Language can be examined and reflected on by the speaker.

Question 10

What 5 Universals do all languages have in common?

Answer 10

Generality, Parity, Universality, Mutability and Inaccessibility

Question 11

What is GENERALITY?

Answer 11

All languages have a grammar which can be analyzed.

Question 12

How would you describe PARITY?

Answer 12

All grammars are equal and there is no primitive language.

All grammars tell their speakers how to form and interpret words and sentences.

Language analysis must reflect the way language is actually used (descriptive approach), versus someone’s idealized vision of how it should be used (prescriptive approach).

Question 13

What does UNIVERSALITY mean?

Answer 13

Grammars are alike in basic ways.

All languages have consonants, vowels, nouns, verbs, negative morphemes, relative clauses and constraints.

Question 14

Define MUTABILITY for me.

Answer 14

Grammars change over time -> Shakespearean English to Modern day English.

Question 15

What is INACCESSIBILITY?

Answer 15

The fact that grammatical knowledge is subconscious to Native speakers of a language who know instinctively what sounds right or wrong.

Question 16

Explain the difference between prescriptive and descriptive language approaches.

Answer 16

Prescriptive: When a teacher or professor preserves the traditional views of “correct language”, and treat it as if it should never change. They disapprove, correct, impose and influence language decisions.

Descriptive: Linguists observe a language as it actually is without judging.

Question 17

Describe language/langage, a language(s)/langue, and speech/parole according to Saussure.

Answer 17

Language: The ability to learn and produce language -> The natural, universal and innate ability among humans.

A language(s): An abstract code or system -> French, Inuktitut, Cree.

Speech: Act of speaking in context -> “Stop the bus!”