Language Flashcards
Definition of Language
A symbolic system of sounds or gestures, put together according to a certain set of rules
What are the four types of communication ?
Olfactory, Tactile, Visual, Language
Characteristics of Human Language
- Open system vs. Closed system
- The ability to displace
- Learned
- Symbolic
- Arbitrary
- Discrete
What are symbols in Language?
Sounds or gestures that stand for meaning among a group of people
Signal
A sound or gesture that has a natural or self-evident meaning
Fixed action patterns
Behaviors that occurs in an identical fasion among most members of a species (though it may be limited to one sex or the other), is elicited by specfic enviornmental stimulus, and is typically more complex than reflex.
Emphasis of Lecture
- Structure of language (descriptive linguestics)
- Historical Linguistics
- Language and culture (Ethnolinguistics)
- Language in social contexts (Socialinguistics)
(Structure of language) Descriptive linguistics:
The branch of anthropological linguestics that studies how language are structured
6 levels of Language
- discourse
- Sentences
- Phrases
- Words
- Morphemes
- Phonemes
Phonology
Sutdy of the basic building blocsk of language and how they are combined
Phonetics
The study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech sounds
Two basic parts of language structure
- Phonology
- Grammar
Allophones
Different sounds belonging to the same class of phoneme
English has how many phonemes and in how many languages?
English has 46 phonemes in a range of 15-100 languages
Morpheme
Smallest units of sound that have meanings
Free-Morpheme
Morpheme that has meaning by itself
Bound Morpheme
Morpheme that only has meaning when attached to another morpheme