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
Allomorph
Variants of the same morpheme
Grammar
the systematic ways that sounds are combined in any given language to send and receive meaningful utterances
Three parts of Grammar
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Lexicon
Morphology
Rules governing how morphemes are formed into words
Syntax
Principles guiding how words are arranged into phrases and sentences
Lexicon
A dictionary containing all the morphemes and meanings within a language
Frame substition
A method used to identify the syntatic unit of language
Nonverbal communication
The various means by which humans send and receive messages without using words
kinesics
The study of communication through body movements, gestures, stances, and facial expresses
Paralanguage
The extralinguistic noises that accompany language, for example of crying or laughing
Voice Qualities
The background characteristics of a speakers voice
Vocalizations
identifiable paralinguistic noises that are turned on and off at perceivable nd relatvely short intervals
Vocal characterizers
Sound production such as laughing or cyring that humas speak through
Vocal Qualifiers
Sound productions of brief duration that modify utterances in terms of intensity
Vocal Segregates
Sound productions that are similar to the sounds of language, but do not apperar in sequences that can properly be called words
Historical linguistics
Focuses on how languages change over time and the realationship of languages to one another
Language Families
Languages that derive from same protolanguage
Protolanguage
A hypothesized ancestral language from which two or more languages seem to ahve derived
Glottochronology
A method of dating divergence in branches of language families
Core vocabulary
Nonspecialist vocabulary that generally includes pronouns, lower numbers, names of body parts, and natural objects
Ethnolinguistics
The study of the relationship between language and culture
Nuer
Pastoralist people of the Sudan
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The notion that a persons languages shapes her or his perceptions and view of the world.
Socialinguistics
The branch of anthropological linguistics that studies how language and culture are related and how language is used in different social contexts
Code switching
The practice of using different forms of language depending on the soical situation
Dialects
Varying forms of a language that reflects particular regions or social classes and that are similar enough to be mutually intelligible
