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Linguistics > Key Terms Exam 1 > Flashcards

Key Terms Exam 1 Flashcards

1
Q

corpus (corpora pl)

A

Any collection of texts from which linguistic information can be extracted, but especially those collections developed and designed specifically for that purpose.

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2
Q

corpus linguistics

A

Branch of linguistics concerned with the design, development, and use of corpora to study language.

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3
Q

descriptive rule

A

Statement of what regularly actually occurs in a language, as opposed to what supposedly should occur.

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4
Q

descriptivist

A

Person inclined to describe language as it is, has been, or will be, rather than to regulate it according to what he or she believes it should be.

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5
Q

prescriptive rule

A

Statement of what supposedly should occur in a language, rather than what has or does occur.

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6
Q

prescriptivist

A

Person inclined to regulate language as he or she believes it should be, rather than describing what it is as an adjective.

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7
Q

hypercorrection

A

Linguistic form, structure, or pronunciation that a speaker supposes to be correct, or formal that results in an actual prescriptive error.

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8
Q

style

A

Specific type of speech, for instance, formal speech, colloquial speech, academic speech, or gossip. Levels of formality.

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9
Q

cognate

A

Word from one language that shares an etymon with a word from another language. Words from daughter languages that have the same meaning.

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10
Q

diachronic

A

Historical or concerned with history; language develops diachronically.

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11
Q

dialectology

A

Study of variation in a particular language or language family.

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12
Q

discourse analysis

A

Systematic study of discourse, or continuous speech, written or spoken.

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13
Q

displacement

A

Human cognitive ability to project forward or backward in time, as well as to think in the abstract.

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14
Q

etymon

A

Historical word from which a more recent form is derived, whether in the same or a different language.

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15
Q

grammar

A

Structure and rules governing a language at the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse.

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16
Q

grammatical

A

Features of a language that conforms to the rules of grammar and are therefore comprehensible to other native speakers of the language.

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17
Q

historical linguistics

A

Branch of linguistics focused on the development of language over time, also known as diachronic linguistics.

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18
Q

langue

A

Underlying, abstract system of language; relationship of linguistic signs to one another in lexicon and syntax.

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19
Q

parole

A

Actual speech as opposed to langue.

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20
Q

lexicography

A

Art and craft of writing dictionaries or about the lexicon.

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21
Q

linguistic competence

A

Innate human ability to acquire and use language, given certain biological and developmental constraints.

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22
Q

linguistic performance

A

A speaker’s utterances in a given language.

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23
Q

linguistic sign

A

linguistic entity that joins signifier and signified in one linguistic representation, the actual meaning of a word. (signifier+signified=linguistic sign)

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24
Q

signifier

A

Any meaningful string of sounds, that is, linguistic form. Arbitrary noises that make up a word.(signifier+signified=linguistic sign)

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25
Q

signified

A

Concept that the signifier represents. (signifier+signified=linguistic sign)

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26
Q

linguistics

A

Study of language in any or all of its aspects.

27
Q

metathesis

A

Phonological process in which sounds switch places in the phonemic structure of a word.

28
Q

morphology

A

Study of word forms and the process in which they are formed.

29
Q

phonetics

A

Description and classification of sounds and the study of their production and perception.

30
Q

phonology

A

Study of sound system and sound change, usually within a specific language or language family.

31
Q

pragmatics

A

Study of how we communicate with language.

32
Q

proto-language

A

Language for which there is no written evidence, but can be reconstructed from the evidence of related written languages, according to systematic rules of historical sound change and word formation. A hypothesized language.

33
Q

psycholinguistics

A

Study of relationships among language, mind, and brain, including process of language acquisition.

34
Q

recursivity

A

The capacity to create an infinite amount of creative language with a finite amount of lexicon, grammatical rules, etc.

35
Q

reflex

A

Word derived from an older form, whether in the same or a different language.

36
Q

semantics

A

Systematic study of meaning of language, especially word and sentence meaning.

37
Q

sociolinguistics

A

Study of language in use, especially in terms of variation. General use by socioeconomic status, gender, race.

38
Q

stylistics

A

Study of language as used in artificial contexts, such as literature, judicial or political speech.

39
Q

synchronic

A

Concerned with the present state of affairs. Language in use at the present time.

40
Q

syntax

A

Systematic ways in which words combine to create well formed phrases, clauses, and sentences.

41
Q

language change: internal factors

A

change within the language itself, focusing of structure and sound. (natural development ask/aks)

42
Q

language change: social factors

A

change that depends on the behavior of speech community. (language contact)

43
Q

language change: cognitive factors

A

change that depends on our comprehension of the language and our mind’s language process. (all intensive purposes)

44
Q

Ferdinand de Saussure

A

Swiss linguist who proposed the theory signifier+signified=linguistic sign

45
Q

Sir William Jones

A

First to propose that languages like Latin, Greek, and Hindi all developed from the same proto-language via his observations of Sanskrit.

46
Q

Jacob Grimm

A

German linguist who takes Sir Williams hypothesis a step further to explain specific sound changes that happened to make Germanic and Romance dialects differ from one another.

47
Q

Karl von Frisch

A

Studied in depth the communicative possibilities in honey bee dances in the 1940’s

48
Q

Ablaut

A

The change in the vowel sound to conjugate an Old English strong verb. Swim, swam, swum.

49
Q

Analogy

A

Linguistic process by which the less usual is drawn to resemble the usual. Children commonly make these sort of mistakes, “look at the gooses!

50
Q

Gender (of a language)

A

Grammatical category that depends on the contrast among masculine/feminine/neuter, used to classify nouns, pronouns, and adjectives.

51
Q

Grammatical gender

A

Arbitrary gender given to nouns etc. (still exists in Romance languages)

52
Q

Hypotactic

A

Syntax or style created by subordination. Meaning you know the case of a word by sentence order not word structure.

53
Q

Natural gender

A

Reflects the actual gender of an animate object such as people, animals, or pronouns.

54
Q

Orthograph

A

Latinate term used to refer to spelling.

55
Q

Emoticon

A

Symbol that communicates emotional response.

56
Q

Grammaticalization

A

Process in which an open class word becomes a grammatical form. Like cyber becoming a prefix for things to do with the internet.

57
Q

Interposing

A

Word formative process involving insertion of a word or words into a fixed idiomatic phrase

58
Q

Lingua Franca

A

Common language developed or adopted in specific context to facilitate communications among speakers who don’t share a common language.

59
Q

Retronymy

A

Word formative process that creates words or phrases to augment or replace words once used alone, in order to distinguish them from new words or phrases for new development, like e-mail.

60
Q

Old English

A

449-1066: invasion of Germanic tribes the the British isles (Jutes, Saxons, Angles)

61
Q

Middle English

A

1066-1476: Norman conquest

62
Q

Early Modern English

A

1476-1776: invention of the printing press

63
Q

Modern English

A

1776-present: Declaration of Independence

Linguistics (4 decks)

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