Language

Question 1

language

Answer 1

a means of communication, a system of symbols

Question 2

What can we do with language?

Answer 2

share elaborate ideas, discuss present but also past and future, share our experiences with others, benefit from other people’s experiences, and store large amounts of information

Question 3

how is language acquired?

Answer 3

thru learning as a part of evolution

Question 4

Human infants…

Answer 4

…are born with capacity for language, which language a baby will learn depends on which language they will be exposed to

Question 5

Out of all primates…

Answer 5

…only we can speak

Question 6

Only humans…

Answer 6

…have the right anatomy and physiology for speech production, only we have the speech friendly version of the FOXP2 gene

Question 7

Animal communication systems

Answer 7

limited number of sounds, produced in response to specific stimuli, they are inherited, automatic, not modified, and cannot be combined

Question 8

arbitrariness

Answer 8

association between word and its meaning is arbitrary

Question 9

productivity

Answer 9

limited number of sounds are combined to create thousands of words and millions of meanings in each language

Question 10

displacement

Answer 10

language used to refer to past and future (not only the present), hypothetical (not only real) things

Question 11

change

Answer 11

how language changes over time

Question 12

cultural transmission

Answer 12

language is not inherited, it is acquired through learning

Question 13

syntax

Answer 13

rules for arranging words into sentences, different languages have different versions of this

Question 14

phonology

Answer 14

studies sounds that are present and distinct in each language, called phonemes

Question 15

semantics

Answer 15

study of meanings

Question 16

ethnosemantics

Answer 16

studies how speakers of different languages use different sets of terms to classify their experiences and perceptions

Question 17

basic color terms

Answer 17

all speakers of a language know and use on a regular basis

Question 18

minimum of color terms

Answer 18

2

Question 19

maximum of color terms

Answer 19

12

Question 20

Sapir-whorf hypothesis

Answer 20

language shapes thinking, speakers of different languages perceive the world in different ways

Question 21

sociolinguistics

Answer 21

investigates relationship between social and linguistic variation

Question 22

dialects

Answer 22

variations of the same language

Question 23

honorifics

Answer 23

terms of respect used to address or refer to someone, used in interaction between higher and lower status individuals, male and females, etc…

Question 24

Historical linguistics

Answer 24

shows linguistic variation through time, long-term linguistic change, historical relationships among different languages, reconstruction of ancient languages, language loss

Question 25

long-term linguistic change

Answer 25

changes in terms, of grammar, syntax, spellings, meaning, vocab, etc

Question 26

daughter language

Answer 26

languages that descended from the same original language

Question 27

protolanguage

Answer 27

the original language from which daughter languages descended

Question 28

a dialect of an original language evolves into…

Answer 28

…a daughter language when spoken in relative isolation from the rest of the language

Question 29

Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, and Romanian descended from…

Answer 29

…Latin

Question 30

English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian descended from…

Answer 30

…proto-germanic

Question 31

Latin and porto-germanic descended from the…

Answer 31

…proto-indoeuropean language

Question 32

The 10 most spoken languages in the world (1-10)

Answer 32

Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian, French