Linguistics Flashcards
Slang
Informal verbal communication that is generally unacceptable for formal writing.
Polysemous
Words that have multiple meanings
Root
The form of a word after all affixes are removed
Bound Morphome
A morpheme which never occurs alone but is attached to other morphemes
Ex: Kindness, unlikely
Homographs
Words that are spelled identically and possibly pronounced the same
Ex: Bear (animal)
Bear (tolerate)
Homonyms
Words that are pronounced and possibly spelled the same, but with a different meaning
Ex: Bat (animal)
Bat (stick)
Bat (flutter)
Homophones
Words that sound alike but have different spellings and meanings
Ex: there
they’re
their
Lexicon
A speaker’s mental dictionary
Morpheme
The smallest unit of linguistic meaning or function
Ex: sheep dog s
1 2 3
3 morphemes
Morphology
The sub-field of linguistics that studies internal structure of words and relationships among words
Ebonics
An alternative term used in 1997 for various dialects of the African-American English
Etymology
The history of words; the study of the history of words
Phonology
The sub-field of linguistics that studies structure and systematic patterning of sounds in human language
Phonetics
- The system of speech sounds of a language or group of languages
- The study and systematic classification of the sounds made in spoken utterance
Pragmatics
A technical term meaning, roughly, what the person speaking or writing actually meant, rather than what the words themselves mean
Semantics
The study of meaning, reference, truth, and related notions
Syntax
The rules of sentence formation; the component of mental grammar and structure of phrases and sentences
Antonym
A word of opposite meaning
Acronym
A word formed by combining the initial letters of a series or related words
Ex: NATO, ESL, MIA
Clause
A group of words containing a subject and predicate (Found in a complex or compound sentence)
Creole
Pidgin language that has become established as the native language of a speech community
Connotation
An additional, suggested meaning as opposed to a literal, direct meaning
Cognate
Words that have the same linguistic root or origin
Denotation
The literal direct meaning of a word
Metonymy
A figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another
Ex: The White House –> government
Orthography
- The art of writing words with proper letters according to standard usage
- the representation of sounds of a language by written or printed symbols
- language and spelling
- usually arises as methods of communication b/w groups that have no language in common
Synonym
One of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have similar meanings
Dialect
A variety of a language whose grammar differs in systematic ways from other varieties
Prefix
Affix has to be added to the beginning of a word
Ex: mis-lead
Suffix
Affix has to be added at the end of the word
Ex: fool-ish
Illocutionary Force
The basic purpose of a speaker in making an utterance and attitudes that accompany it
Proto-language
A recorded or reconstructed language that is the ancestor of another language
Inflectional Morphemes
Indicates number, person, case, and tense; the part of grammar that deals with inflections of words
Derivational Morphemes
The part of grammar that deals with the derivations of words
Deep Structure
The abstract level of language; conceived as containing all info needed to make any sentence
Surface Structure
Grammatical structure that actually occurs; in some types of grammar, a representation of the sequence of syntactic elements that constitute one sentence
