Ling Exam 1 Flashcards
duality of patterning
discreteness
combining a set number of (not necessarily) meaningless entities into a (possibly infinite) number of meaningful entities; also applies to words and sentences
displacement
communicating about things that are not immediately present or do not exist
open-endedness
productivity
saying and understanding words and sentences that have not been heard before
stimulus freedom
not having set responces to given sayings or situations; free will, creativity; getting a meaning across even if the response is unexpected
arbitrariness
connection between form and meaning is arbitrary; not 1 to 1
Change: Pronunciation
great English vowel shift;
Change: Vocabulary
semantic change; amelioration; pejoration; metaphor
Change: Grammar (word)
plurals; grammaticalization
Change: Grammar (sentence)
word order;
amelioration
meaning of a word gets better
pejoration
meaning of a word gets worse
metaphor
meaning of a word changes because of how the initial meaning relates to another meaning
gramaticalization
process of content words gaining grammatical function (sometimes stop being content words)
content words
have a dictionary meaning
function words
have a grammatical function (helping verbs, prepositions)
sound correspondence
can be used to prove language relationships
convergence
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)
mixed languages
“spanglish”; community in which the majority of people regularly use two or more languages–bilingual mixed language;
creoles/pidgins
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
substratum language(s)
language spoken by socially less powerful people in contact language, often contributes grammar and pronunciation
superstratum language
language spoken by more socially powerful people in contact language, often contributes lexicon
adstratum language
when two groups have the same amount of power in a contant language (more business/pidgin)
