Ling Exam 1

Question 1

duality of patterning

discreteness

Answer 1

combining a set number of (not necessarily) meaningless entities into a (possibly infinite) number of meaningful entities; also applies to words and sentences

Question 2

displacement

Answer 2

communicating about things that are not immediately present or do not exist

Question 3

open-endedness

productivity

Answer 3

saying and understanding words and sentences that have not been heard before

Question 4

stimulus freedom

Answer 4

not having set responces to given sayings or situations; free will, creativity; getting a meaning across even if the response is unexpected

Question 5

arbitrariness

Answer 5

connection between form and meaning is arbitrary; not 1 to 1

Question 6

Change: Pronunciation

Answer 6

great English vowel shift;

Question 7

Change: Vocabulary

Answer 7

semantic change; amelioration; pejoration; metaphor

Question 8

Change: Grammar (word)

Answer 8

plurals; grammaticalization

Question 9

Change: Grammar (sentence)

Answer 9

word order;

Question 10

amelioration

Answer 10

meaning of a word gets better

Question 11

pejoration

Answer 11

meaning of a word gets worse

Question 12

metaphor

Answer 12

meaning of a word changes because of how the initial meaning relates to another meaning

Question 13

gramaticalization

Answer 13

process of content words gaining grammatical function (sometimes stop being content words)

Question 14

content words

Answer 14

have a dictionary meaning

Question 15

function words

Answer 15

have a grammatical function (helping verbs, prepositions)

Question 16

sound correspondence

Answer 16

can be used to prove language relationships

Question 17

convergence

Answer 17

when two or more languages are in extended, frequent contact with each other, but consider themselves separate groups, they become more similar to each other without combining (kannada and urdu)

Question 18

mixed languages

Answer 18

“spanglish”; community in which the majority of people regularly use two or more languages–bilingual mixed language;

Question 19

creoles/pidgins

Answer 19

pidgins are more trade (do not start out as full languages), creoles are more slavery; imperfect language learning due to power differential and lack of common language/lessons; arise when people who don’t speak the same language need to communicate; grammar is usually simplified, with greater influence from substrate language

Question 20

substratum language(s)

Answer 20

language spoken by socially less powerful people in contact language, often contributes grammar and pronunciation

Question 21

superstratum language

Answer 21

language spoken by more socially powerful people in contact language, often contributes lexicon

Question 22

adstratum language

Answer 22

when two groups have the same amount of power in a contant language (more business/pidgin)