Language Across Time Vocab Flashcards
All the vocab need for Unit 2 AOS1
Dialect
geographical variety of English
Sociolect
social variety of English (eg. Australian teen-speak)
Ethnolect
cultural/ethnic variety of English (eg. African American vernacular)
Idiolect
Individual variety of English
Vernacular
the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region
prescriptivism
approach to studying language involving belief that there is ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’
descriptivism
approach to studying language involving the acceptance of language as it is.
codification
to place lexemes in a dictionary or to formally recognise as being a real word.
Borrowing
when you take a word from another language and adopt it into your own.
neologisms
Modern, newly created words or expressions. (technology has triggered a number of neologisms)
word death
the loss of a word from common recognition and usage in a language
Lingua Franca
A common standard language than spans societies
commonisation
process in which a brand name or proper noun becomes a common noun
acronym
word formed from the initials (laser, scuba)
initialism
abbreviation consisting of letters pronounced separately. (BBC, ATM)
compounding
formation of word by fusing together two free morphemes, sometimes hyphenated.
blends
words or phonemes are blended rather than combined whole (brunch)
shortenings
arise from shortened forms of longer words (exam, gym)
affixation
creating new words by adding prefixes or suffixes to existing lexemes
conversion
when a word is used in a different word class (eg. noun ‘google’ to verb ‘to google’)
backformation
where a word is formed by removing an actual or often just a supposed or incorrectly identified affix. (eg. pease - pea)
elevation
when unpleasant overtones of a word erode.
deterioration
when words lose positive connotations and take on negative ones.
broadening
expansion of the contexts in which a lexeme can appear
narrowing
reduction of contexts in which a word can appear.
semantic shift
a total alteration of the contexts in which a word can be (i.e it changes meaning)
taboo
topic an behaviour viewed negatively in a culture
euphemisms
a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
