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Linguistics Flashcards

1
Q

What is the difference between language acquisition and language learning?

A

Acquisition is a natural and unconscious process of language development in humans that occurs without instruction. Learning is a process of gaining conscious knowledge of language through instruction.

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2
Q

The design features of language

A

Proposed by Hockett, the features that distinguish human language from other communication systems. These include semanticity, arbitrariness, discreteness, displacement, productivity, and duality of patterning.

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3
Q

What is semanticity?

A

Specific signals can be matched with specific meanings. In short, words have meanings.

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4
Q

What is arbitrariness?

A

There is no logical connection between the form of the signal and the thing it refers to.

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5
Q

What is discreteness?

A

Messages in the system are made up of smaller repeatable parts rather than indivisible units. A word, for example, can be broken down into units of sound.

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6
Q

What is displacement?

A

The language user can talk about things that are not present - the messages can refer to things in remote time (past and future) or space (here or elsewhere).

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7
Q

What is productivity?

A

Language users can understand and create never-before-heard utterances.

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8
Q

What is duality of patterning?

A

A large number of meaningful utterances can be recombined in a systematic way from a small number of discrete parts of language.

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9
Q

What is grammar?

A

Linguistic rule system that we use to produce and understand sentences

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10
Q

What are the phonetics in a language?

A

The inventory of sounds in a language.

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11
Q

What is phonology?

A

Rules of how sounds are combined in a language.

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12
Q

What is morphology?

A

The rules of word formation in a language.

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13
Q

What is syntax?

A

Rules of sentence formation in a language.

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14
Q

What are semantics?

A

Rules that govern how meaning is expressed by words and sentences in a language.

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15
Q

What is the difference between descriptive grammar and prescriptive grammar?

A

Descriptive grammar is based on the language we speak, while prescriptive grammar is the rules prescribed by a language authority.

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16
Q

How do prescriptive and descriptive grammar overlap?

A

Some prescriptive rules aren’t descriptive rules at all, like split infinitives. Others are descriptive rules, like double negative rules. Modification is another way they overlap.

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17
Q

What is modification, and how is it related to prescriptive and descriptive grammar?

A

Adjustment, change, and modification of grammatical systems based on various social factors. Prescriptive grammar makes some people modify their grammar.

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18
Q

What is a continuum of language varieties?

A

Grammars that share enough of a historical and grammatical relationship to be recognized as varieties of one language.

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19
Q

What is a dialect?

A

A variety of a language that differs from other varieties in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary and that is spoken and understood by a particular group, which might be identified by region, ethnicity, social class, etc.

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20
Q

What is the Universal Grammar?

A

The set of linguistic rules common to all languages; hypothesized to be part of human cognition. An example is how all languages seem to combine subjects and predicates.

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21
Q

What are linguistic parameters?

A

Binary settings (switches) of universal grammatical principles proposed to account for differences among language.

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22
Q

How is sign language a full linguistic system?

A

Sign language Sign languages have syntax, morphology, and semantics, as well as phonology (called primes). They also have Hockett’s design features.

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23
Q

How is sign language different from body language?

A

Body language has no duality of patterning, productivity, displacement. And most of it is instinctive.

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24
Q

True or false? We all have unconscious knowledge of a linguistic rule system.

A

True.

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25
Q

True or false? Language exist independent of writing systems.

A

True.

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26
Q

True of false? All languages have grammar.

A

True.

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27
Q

True of false? All languages have the same expressive power.

A

True.

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28
Q

True of false? All children acquire language if exposed to it, without instruction.

A

True.

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29
Q

True of false? All languages change over time, no matter how hard we try to stop that change.

A

True.

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30
Q

True of false? A language is really a continuum of language varieties.

A

True.

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31
Q

True of false? All languages have a common set of basic grammatical properties (UG), which may be parameterized.

A

True.

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32
Q

What is the scientific method and how is it relevant to linguistics?

A

The scientific method is the formation of hypotheses that explain data and the testing of those hypotheses against further data. Many of the properties of language are relatively new discoveries which have come from the result of rigorous scientific testing.

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33
Q

What is linguistics?

A

It is the scientific study of language.

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34
Q

What is a generative grammar? Why is it generative?

A

A system of grammatical rules that allow speakers to create possible sentences in a language. It is generative because it is designed to describe a precise and finite set of rules that generates the possible sentences in a language. In other words, we don’t need to memorize all the possible sentences in a language in order to speak it.

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35
Q

Who came up with generative grammar?

A

Noam Chomsky (as a graduate student!)

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36
Q

What is rationalism? How has it influenced linguistics?

A

Rationalism is a philosophy based on the idea that we use innate knowledge, or reason, to make sense of the world. Chomsky approach to language was rationalist, because he believed people have a biological capability to acquire language.

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37
Q

What is empiricism?

A

Empiricism is a philosophy based on the idea that we gain knowledge not through reason but through experience and that the mind starts out as a blank slate.

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38
Q

What is linguistic competence? What is linguistic performance?

A

Competence is the unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows us to produce and understand a language. Performance is the language we actually produce, including slips of the tongue and other missteps.

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39
Q

What is true about our knowledge of words?

A

We all have unconscious knowledge of word structure.

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40
Q

What are the two basic classes of words?

A

Content words and function words.

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41
Q

What are morphemes?

A

Pieces of words that express their own meanings. They are the smallest unit of meaning in a word.

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42
Q

What is the point of morphology?

A

Morphology helps us recognize words and possible words.

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43
Q

What is morphology?

A

The study of the system of rules underlying our knowledge of the structure of words.

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44
Q

What is a lexicon?

A

Our mental dictionary; stores information about words and the lexical rulesthat we use to build them.

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45
Q

What is a syntactic category?

A

A set of words that share a significant number of grammatical characteristics (nouns, verbs, etc.)

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46
Q

What are content words? What are function words? Which is an open class and which is a closed class?

A

Words with lexical meanings (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are content words, and are an open class. While function words are words with functional meanings (determiners, auxiliary verbs, etc.) and are a closed class.

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47
Q

Which type of word takes on inflectional morphemes?

A

The content words (except “no ifs, ands, or buts”)

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48
Q

What is an infixation?

A

Inserting a morpheme inside another morpheme. We know where these go automatically (before the stress, or sometimes the second stress).

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49
Q

What is a clitic?

A

A clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent but phonologically dependent on another word. They are distinct from regular affixes. An example is turning “would have” into “woulda.”

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50
Q

What is a root morpheme? What is a bound root morpheme?

A

A root morpheme is a morpheme to which an affix can attach. A bound root morpheme can’t stand along, but is not an affix.

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51
Q

What is the difference between a derivational affixes and inflectional affixes?

A

A derivational affix attaches to a morpheme or word to derive a new word. An inflectional affix adds grammatical information to an existing word.

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52
Q

What is a hierarchical word structure?

A

A property of words whereby one morpheme is contained inside another.

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53
Q

What is the inflection that expresses plural or singular nature of the noun?

A

Number.

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54
Q

What is vowel mutation?

A

Change of inflection through a change in vowel structure rather than through affixation.

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55
Q

What is an example of pluralia tantum?

A

Scissors, pants, glasses, etc.

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56
Q

What is case?

A

Case expresses the grammatical function of a noun phrase, or identifies the noun as subject, object, etc.

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57
Q

What is the nominative case?

A

The case typically assigned to subject noun phrases.

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58
Q

What is the accusative case?

A

The case typically assigned to the direct object noun phrases.

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59
Q

What is the dative case?

A

The case typically assigned to indirect object noun phrases.

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60
Q

What is the genitive case?

A

The case typical assigned to possessive noun phrases.

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61
Q

What is the difference between biological grammar and grammatical gender in language?

A

Biological gender is based on the actual gender of the subject (actor/actress). Grammatical gender has no relationship with the gender of the object.

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62
Q

What is an infinitive?

A

It is the base form of the word, in English is preceded by to (most of the time).

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63
Q

Which verbs are strong and which are weak?

A

Strong verbs express inflection through vowel mutations, while weak verbs express inflection through affixes.

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64
Q

What is a participle?

A

A form of a verb that follows an auxiliary verb have or be.

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65
Q

What is suppletion?

A

Process of change whereby one form of a word has no phonological similarity to a related for of that word.

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66
Q

What are the morphological types of langauges?

A

Analytic or synthetic, or somewhere in between.

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67
Q

What is the morphological type of English?

A

It is an analytic language.

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68
Q

What is a synthetic language?

A

A language in which syntactic relations are expressed by inflectional morphemes rather than by word order.

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69
Q

What is an analytic language?

A

Language in which syntactic relations are expressed primarily by word order rather than by inflection morphemes attached to words.

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70
Q

What are the types of synthetic languages?

A

Agglutinative and fusional

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71
Q

What is an agglutinative language?

A

A language whose words have several morphemes that attach to a root morpheme, and each morpheme has only one distinct meaning.

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72
Q

What is a polysynthetic language?

A

A language with a high number of morphemes per word.

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73
Q

What is a fusional language?

A

A language in which morphemes have more that one meaning fused into a single affix.

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74
Q

How do analytic languages form words?

A

Often by combining free morphemes into compound words.

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75
Q

What are paradigms?

A

Data organized in a way that allows you to compare and contrast the features of the language.

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76
Q

What is the difference between a jargon and a register?

A

Jargon is specialized vocabulary, while a register is a manner of speaking that depends on the audience, like formal or informal.

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77
Q

How are words formed through coining?

A

Coining is also known as neologism, is a word that was simply made up.

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78
Q

How are words formed through compounding?

A

Compounding is combining one or more words into a single word.

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79
Q

What are eponyms?

A

Words that come from the name of a person associated with it.

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80
Q

What is a retronym?

A

A word that provides a new name for something to differentiate the original word from a more recent form or version.

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81
Q

How are words formed through blends?

A

Blends, AKA portmanteaus, are words made from putting parts of two words together

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82
Q

How are words formed through conversion?

A

It is a change of a word’s syntactic category without changing form, such a noun becoming a verb. Often the stress will change.

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83
Q

How are words formed through initialism?

A

A type of acronym formed from the initial letters of a group of words, in which the letters are pronounced. (CD, DVD, FBI)

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84
Q

How are words formed through clipping?

A

Making a word by omitting syllables in an existing word (presh)

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85
Q

How are words formed through backformation?

A

Making a new word by omitting what appears to be a morpheme but actually isn’t. E.g. diagnosis (n) lead to the create of the word diagnose (v)

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86
Q

How are words formed through reduplication?

A

Making a word by doubling an entire free morpheme.

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87
Q

/p/

A

voiceless bilabial stop Pen, sPin

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88
Q

/b/

A

voiced bilabial

stop book web

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89
Q

/t/

A

voiceless aveolar stop

Two, sTing, beT

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90
Q

/d/

A

voiced alveolar stop

Do, oDD

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91
Q

/č/ or /tʃ/

A

voiceless palatal affricate

CHair, naTure, teaCH

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92
Q

/ ǰ/ or /dʒ/

A

voiced palatal affricate

Gin, Joy, eDGE

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93
Q

/k/

A

voiceless velar stop

Cat, Kill, sKin, Queen, thiCK

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94
Q

/g/

A

voiced velar stop

Go, Get, beG

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95
Q

/f/

A

voiceless labio-dental fricative

Fool, enouGH, leaF

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96
Q

/v/

A

voiced labio-dental fricative

Voice, haVE

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97
Q

/θ/

A

voiceless dental fricative

Thing, teeTH

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98
Q

/ð/

A

voiced dental fricative

This, breaTHE, faTHer

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99
Q

/s/

A

voiceless alveolar fricative

See, City, paSS

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100
Q

/z/

A

voiced alveolar fricative

Zoo, roSe

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101
Q

/š/ or /ʃ/

A

voiceless palatal fricative

She, Sure, emoTion, leaSH

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102
Q

/ž/ or /ʒ/

A

voiced palatal fricative pleaSure, beiGE

103
Q

/h/

A

voiceless glottal glide (fricative)

Ham House mayHem

104
Q

/m/

A

voiced bilabial nasal

Man, haM

105
Q

/n/

A

voiced alveolar nasal

No, tiN

106
Q

/ŋ/

A

voiced nasal velar

riNGer, siNG, drinNk

107
Q

/l/

A

voiced alveolar liquid

Left, beLL

108
Q

/r/ or /ɹ/

A

voiced alveolar liquid

Run, veRy

109
Q

/w/

A

voiced bilabial glide

We When

110
Q

/y/ or /j/

A

voiced palatal glide

Yes

111
Q

/ʍ/

A

voiceless bilabial glide

WHat

112
Q

What study is phonetics?

A

The study of speech sounds.

113
Q

What is a phoneme?

A

A unit of sound that makes a difference in the meaning of a word.

114
Q

What is a consonant?

A

A sound characterized by closure or obstruction of the vocal tract.

115
Q

What is a vowel?

A

A sound characterized by and open vocal tract, with no closure or obstruction.

116
Q

What is a minimal pair?

A

A pair of words that differ only in one sound in the same position.

117
Q

What is phonemic transcription?

A

The written recording of sounds using the distinctive phonemes of a language, resulting in a one-to-one correspondence between a sound and a symbol.

118
Q

What is a natural class?

A

A set of sounds that have certain phonetic features in common.

119
Q

What is voicing?

A

Vibration of the vocal folds.

120
Q

What are the articulators?

A

Parts of the human body involved in speech production: tongue, teeth, lips, glottis, velum, vocal folds.

121
Q

What are diphthongs?

A

Two-part vowel sound consisting of a vowel and a glide in one syllable.

122
Q

What is tone?

A

Variation in pitch that makes a difference in the meaning of words.

123
Q

What is stress?

A

Relative emphasis given to syllables in a word.

124
Q

What is nasalization?

A

The production of a speech sound with the velum lowered so that most of the airflow passes through the nose rather than the mouth.

125
Q

What is aspiration?

A

A puff of air that accompanies the initial voiceless consonants in such words as pat and tick.

126
Q

What is an allophone?

A

A predictable phonetic variant of a phoneme.

127
Q

/i/

A

Tense high front monophthong. Unrounded. beat meat seat

128
Q

/ɪ/

A

Lax high front monophthong. Unrounded. bit pill tip

129
Q

/e/

A

Tense mid front monophthong. Unrounded. bait rave lame

130
Q

/ɛ/

A

Lax mid front monophthong. Unrounded. bet met let

131
Q

/æ/

A

Lax low front monophthong. Unrounded. Ash. Bat, can, app

132
Q

/ə/

A

Lax mid central unstressed monophthong. Unrounded. Schwa. tuna

133
Q

/ʌ/

A

Lax mid central stressed monopthong. Unrounded. Fun. Bud. Rust.

134
Q

/u/

A

Tense high back monophthong. Rounded. Boot. Loon. Tooth.

135
Q

/ʊ/

A

Lax high back monophthong. Rounded. Book. Full. Soot.

136
Q

/o/

A

Tense mid back monophthong. Rounded. Boat. Rome. Toast. Poach.

137
Q

/ɔ/

A

Lax mid back monophthong. Rounded. Dawn but not don.

138
Q

/ɑ/

A

Lax low back monophthong. Unrounded. Hot. Moth.

139
Q

/ay/

/aɪ/ or /ai/

A

Central low diphthong.

Sky. Mine. Tithe.

140
Q

/aw/

/æw/, /æʊ/ or /aʊ/

A

Low back diphthong

Loud. Cow. Foul. Mouse.

141
Q

/oy/

/ɔy/, /ɔɪ/ or /oɪ/

A

Mid back diphthong

Toy. Oil. Coil.

142
Q

What are common diphthongs that don’t need phonemic transcriptions?

A

/iy/ - beat

/ey/ - bait

/uw/ - boot

/ow/ - boat

143
Q

What is a phonological rule?

A

A description of when a predictable variation of a particular sound occurs.

144
Q

What is a flap sound?

A

A manner of consonant articulation similar to a stop, but with no air pressure build-up and therefore no air release.

145
Q

What is an assimilation rule?

A

A process of making one sound more like a neighboring one with respect to some feature.

Examples include:

  • Vowel nasalization like in /pæn/ and /cæn/.
  • Aveolar nasal assimilation like /sæmwɪč/
  • Nasal assimilation like /cæm bi/ for can be.
146
Q

What is palatalization?

A

The process that results from an interaction between (1) either front vowels or a /y/ glide and (2) a neighboring aveolar consonant, resulting in a fricative or affricate palatal consonant. Aveolar stops that are followed by /r/ become palatized.

  • Mature /mətyur/ → /məčur/
  • Drink /driŋk/ → /ǰriŋk/
147
Q

What is voicing assimilation?

A

When the voicing of a sound assimilates to a nearby sound.

/hæv tu/ → /hæf tu/

Voicing assimilation explains the rules for pluralizing nouns.

148
Q

What is an allomorph?

A

A predictable variant of a morpheme.

We have allomorphs in our plural ending -s and our past tense ending -ed.

149
Q

What are sibilants?

A

The natural class of “hissing” or “hushing” sounds in a language, which includes aveolar and palatal fricative and affricates.

/s, z, š, č, ž, ǰ/

150
Q

What is dissimilation?

A

A process causing two neighboring sounds to become less alike with respect to some feature.

  • Liquids and Nasals
    • Purpur → Purple
    • Lunar not lunal
  • Fricative Sounds
    • months → /mʌnts/
151
Q

What is insertion?

What are the four types of insertion?

A

The process causing a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word.

  • Insertion of vowels
    • realtor → /rilətr̩/
  • Insertion of consonants
    • /θʌnər/ → /θʌndər/
  • Insertion of voiceless stops
    • /sʌmθɪŋ/ → /sʌmpθɪŋ/
  • Insertion of /y/
    • /nuz/ → /nyuz/
152
Q

What is deletion?

What are four types of deletion?

A

Process causing a segment present at the phonemic level to be deleted at the phonetic level.

  • Deletion of /r/ after vowels
    • Some dialects
  • Deletion of fricative next to fricative
    • /fifθs/ → /fiθs/
  • Deletion of like sounds of syllables
    • /prabəbli/ → /prabli/
  • Simplification of consonant clusters
    • Historical: Knight, gnat
    • Simplification of syllable-final consonant clusters
      • /saftbal/ → /safbal/
153
Q

What is fronting?

What are three types of fronting?

A

Process causing a segment produced in the pack of the mouth to change to a segment produced at the front of the mouth

  • Fronting of velar nasal to alveolar nasal
    • /rʌniŋ/ → /rʌnɪn/
  • Fronting in child language
    • /got/ → /dot/
  • Fronting of /x/ (velar fricative)
    • Historical: tough /tʌx/ → /tʌf/
154
Q

What is exchange?

What’s another word for this process?

What are three types of exchanging?

A

Reording sounds or syllables, also known as metathesis

  • Exchanging /s/ and a consonant
    • We task and tax from the latin taxa
    • /æks/ and /æsk/
  • Exchaning /r/ and a vowel
    • Historical brid → bird
    • Introduce → interduce
  • Exchaning syllable onsets
    • animal → aminal
155
Q

What are the six phonological processes discussed in the chapter?

A
  • Assimilation
  • Dissimilation
  • Deletion
  • Insertion
  • Metathesis
  • Fronting
156
Q

What is one of the motivations behind these phonological processes?

A

Ease of articulation. But there can be other factors.

157
Q

What are suprasegmentals?

A

Phonological phenomena that are larger than a single sound; includes syllables, stress, and intonation.

158
Q

What is the definition for a syllable?

A

A basic unit of speech generally containing only one vowel sound (nucleus) and also possibly an onset and a coda (called the rime).

159
Q

What is an onset?

A

The consonant or consonant cluster at the beginning of a syllable.

160
Q

What is a rime?

A

The vowel and any consonants following it atth end of the syllable.

161
Q

What is the nucleus?

A

The vowel that is the minimum unit of the rime.

162
Q

What is the coda?

A

The consonant or consonant cluster at the end of the rime.

163
Q

What is phonotactics?

A

The branch of phonology dealing with natural and unconscious restrictions on the permissible combinations of phonemes in a language.

E.g. In English, it is impossible to begin a syllable with /ŋ/.

164
Q

What is graphotactic?

A

Related to the spelling and writing system. We know irgn is not a word.

165
Q

What is an exchange error?

A

AKA spoonerism

Common type of slip of the tongue involving the exchange of one part of a syllable for another in two different words.

166
Q

What is stress?

A

Relative emphasis given to the syllables of a word.

167
Q

What is intonation?

A

Variation in pitch across an utterance.

168
Q

What is an intonation nucleus?

A

Most prominently stressed syllable in an utterance (sentence).

169
Q

What type of phonological process is happening here?

  • Liquids and Nasals
    • Purpur → Purple
    • Lunar not lunal
  • Fricative Sounds
    • months → /mʌnts/
A

Dissimilation

A process causing two neighboring sounds to become less alike with respect to some feature.

170
Q

What type of phonological process is happening here?

  • vowels
    • realtor → /rilətr̩/
  • consonants
    • /θʌnər/ → /θʌndər/
  • voiceless stops
    • /sʌmθɪŋ/ → /sʌmpθɪŋ/
  • /y/
    • /nuz/ → /nyuz/
A

Insertion

The process causing a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word.

171
Q

What type of phonological process is happening here?

  • /r/ after vowels
    • Some dialects
  • Fricative next to fricative
    • /fifθs/ → /fiθs/
  • Like sounds of syllables
    • /prabəbli/ → /prabli/
  • Simplification of consonant clusters
    • Historical: Knight, gnat
    • Simplification of syllable-final consonant clusters
      • /saftbal/ → /safbal/
A

Deletion

Process causing a segment present at the phonemic level to be deleted at the phonetic level.

172
Q

What type of phonological process is happening here?

  • Velar nasal to alveolar nasal
    • /rʌniŋ/ → /rʌnɪn/
  • Child language
    • /got/ → /dot/
  • /x/ (velar fricative) to /f/
    • Historical: tough /tʌx/ → /tʌf/
A

Fronting

Process causing a segment produced in the pack of the mouth to change to a segment produced at the front of the mouth

173
Q

What type of phonological process is happening here?

  • /s/ and a consonant
    • We task and tax from the latin taxa
    • /æks/ and /æsk/
  • /r/ and a vowel
    • Historical brid → bird
    • Introduce → interduce
  • syllable onsets
    • animal → aminal
A

Exchange

Reording sounds or syllables, also known as metathesis

174
Q

What is the symbol for a syllable?

A

σ

175
Q

What part of a syllable is the first /d/ sound in independence?

A

I believe it’s the onset.

176
Q

What part of a syllable is the /a/ sound in /kafi/?

A

The nucleus.

177
Q

What part of a syllable is the /arǰ/ sound in /larǰ/?

A

Rime

178
Q

What part of a syllable is the /r/ in /klɜvər/?

A

Coda

179
Q

What is the poverty of stimulus argument for language acquisition?

A

Beginning with Noam Chomsky, the position that children do not receive enough data to aquire language simply from what they hear.

The way children overgeneralize grammatical rules is evidence that supports this theory.

180
Q

What is the theory of Universal Grammar?

What is evidence that supports this theory?

A

The Universal Grammar is a set of linguistic rules common to all languages; hypothesized to be part of human cognition. Children tease out the rules of a language when they are very young.

Children form rules even when they don’t match the rules of adults.
Potentially, these rules could match the rules of other languages.

181
Q

What are the stages of language aquisition?

A
  1. The Prelinguistic Stage – A 7mo fetus can hear. By 2mo babies can recognize the intonoation patterns of their language. They can also distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic sounds, even if they’ve never heard the linguistic sound before.
  2. The Babbling Stage: 4-8mo – Babies tend to produce the same consonants no matter what language they are exposed to. /f, v, p, r/ are rarely produced.
  3. The One-Word Stage: 9-18mo – Children produce around 50 commonly used words. Some may be pronounced well, others will be difficult to understand. Overextension and underextension occur at this stage.
  4. The Two-Word Stage: 18-24mo – Naming explosion called fast mapping.
  5. The Early Multiword Stage: 24-30mo – Children overgeneralize grammatical words. What, where, and intonation to form questions. Negation.
  6. The Later Multiword Stage: 30mo+ – Rapid development, difficult to distinguish stages. Why and how used but no inversion. More structured negations with auxilaries. Positive auxilaries. Function words.
182
Q

What is the critical period for language?

A

Early childhood to prepuberty; according to some, the best, maybe only, time in which humans can acquire a first language.

183
Q

What are some important points about adult second language aquisiton?

A
  • Aquisition vs learning depends on proficiency
  • Speakers transfer features of L1 → L2 (interlanguage)
  • Social aspects and motivation are also important for language learning.
184
Q

What is

interlanguage grammar?

A

Intermediate grammar that is influenced by both a person’s native an second languages.

185
Q

What is

bilingualism?

A

Native ability to express oneselfin two language acquired simultaneously, usually at a very young age. AKA bilingual language acquisition).

186
Q

What is codeswitching?

A

Switching between two languages during one conversation.
Codeswitching requiresa great deal of grammatical and conversational expertise. It can happen at the word, phrase, or sentence level.

187
Q

What’s the difference between a pidgin and a creole?

A

A pidgin is a simplified nonnative “contact” language that develops to enale speakers of distinct language to communicate. A creole is a native language with full grammatical complexity that develops (over time) from a pigin.

188
Q

What are localization and lateralization?

A

Localization: Theory that different parts of the brain are associate with or control praticular behaviors and functions.

Lateralization: Idea that cognitive functions reside in or are controlled by either the left of the right side of the brain.

189
Q

What are Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia?

A
  • Broca’s aphasia is characterized by labored speech and general agrammatism and is localized into the front of the brain. Trouble with syntax but not meaning.
  • Wernicke’s apahasia is characteized by fluent speech that makes little sense and is located in the back of the brain. Trouble with meaning but not syntax.
190
Q

What is an anomaly? How is it important in linguistics?

A

An anomaly is a deviation from expected meaning. Like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It’s important because even though it breaks no syntactic or morphological rules, it breaks meaning rules. So our meaning rules are somehow separate from our grammar rules.

191
Q

What are onomatopoeias and echo words? How are they important to linguistics?

A
  • Onomatopoeias are words that sound like the sound they mean. They tell us one way of understanding meaning.
  • AKA echoic words
192
Q

What is the definition of

Semantic Features?

A

Classifications of meaning that can be expressed in terms of binary features, such as [+/-human], [+/-animate], [+/-count].

193
Q

What are the classes of nouns?

A
  • concrete/abstract
  • count/non-count
  • common/proper
194
Q

What is Entailment?

A

Inclusion of one aspect of a word’s or sentence’s meaning in the meaning of another word or sentence.

The meaning of bachelor entails the meaning of man We understand that a bachelor is a man.

195
Q

What is Markedness?

A

Opposition that differentiates between the typical form of a word and its “marked” opposit (“right” is unmarked, and “left” is marked).

196
Q

What are Antonymns?

A

Words we think of as opposites, though oppositions may be:

  • relational: doctor-patient
  • complementary: alive-dead
  • gradable: hot-cold
197
Q

What is a Euphemism?

A

Word of phrase used to avoid offending or to purposely obscure (collateral dammage for ‘civilian deaths’)

198
Q

What is Hyponomy?

A

A word whose meaning is included, or entailed, in the meaning of a more general word.

Tulip is a hymponymn of flower.

199
Q

What is Homonymy? What are the two subtypes?

A
  • Homonyms: Same sound same spelling. saw/saw
  • Homophones: Same sound different spelling. sole/soul
  • Homographs: Different sound same spelling, bow/bow
200
Q

What is a semantic shift?

What are the types of semantic shifts?

A

Semantic shift is a change in the meaning of words over time.

  • Narrowing/broadening
  • Amelioration/pejoration
  • Connotation/denotation

Shifts in connotation: change in a word’s general meaning over time.

Shifts in denotation: Complete change in a word’s meaning over time.

201
Q

What is a metaphor?

A

Nonliteral meaning of one word or phrase that describes another word or phrase.

202
Q

What is a Dead Metaphor?

A

A metaphor that is so common it goes unnoticed as a metaphor (I see your point).

203
Q

What is a mixed metaphor?

A

A metaphor that comprises parts of different metaphors: hit the nail on the jackpot.

204
Q

What is personification?

A

The attribution of human qualities to something that is not human.

205
Q

What is metonymy? How is it related to synecdoche?

A

A description of something in terms of something with which it is closely associated.

  • The pen is mightier than the sword.
  • The law is after her.

Synedoche is a type of metonymy in which we use a part of something to refer to a whole thing. The tonsillectomy rather than the patient.

206
Q

Entailment and Paraphrase

A

Sentences (as well as words) can have entailments.

Different sentences with teh same meaning are called entailments.

207
Q

What is a presupposition?

A

An assumption that is implied by a word or sentence based on word knowledge.

“Having you stopped kissing him?”
Presupposition: You used to kiss him.

“I regret that we lost.”
Presupposition: We lost.

208
Q

What are thematic roles?

A

Semantic roles, including agent, patient, source, goal, etc. that the verb assigns to its arguments.

Arguments are a set of phrases that occur with a verb and are assigned certain semantic roles by the verb.

209
Q

*What is an Agent?

A

A thematic role.

Initiator of the action (capable of volition)

  • The puppy* chewed up the shoe.
  • Marty* played chess.
210
Q

*What is the patient?

A

A thematic role.

Entity undergoing the effect of some action or change of state.

The ice melted.

Marty cooked the bacon.

211
Q

*What is a theme?

A

A thematic role.

Entity moved by the action or whose location is described (with no change of state)

The horse is in the stable.

Marty gave Leo a book.

212
Q

What is the Experiencer?

A

A thematic role.

Entity that is aware of the action or state described by the verb but is not in control of that action or state.

  • The referee* observed the game.
  • Marty* felt happy.
213
Q

*What is the beneficiary?

A

A thematic role.

Entity for whose benefit the action was performed.

We baked a cake for Lorian.

Marty gave Leo the book.

214
Q

*What is the instrument?

A

A thematic role.

Means by which an action is performed or by which something comes about.

She flipped the pancakes with a spatula.

Marty played chess with cookies.

215
Q

What is the location?

A

A thematic role.

Place in which something is situated.

We ate at Denny’s.

John sprinted to the goal.

216
Q

What is the goal?

A

A thematic role.

Entity toward which something moves, either literally metaphorically.

Marty drove the care to the lake.

Marty gave the book to Leo.

She gave a speech to the club.

*She gave the club a speech.

217
Q

What is the source?

A

A thematic role.

Entity from which something moves, either litterally or metaphorically.

The water bubbled from the spring.

They came all the way from New Orleans.

218
Q

What are pragmatics?

A

The study of meanings of sentences in context (utterance meaning).

219
Q

What are direct and indirect speech acts?

A

Speech act: Utterance intended to convey communicative force.

Direct: Utterance whose meaning is the sum of its parts, the literal meaning.

Indirect speech act: Utterance whose meaning depends on context rather than on literal meaning.

Utterances are made up of locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.

220
Q

What is a locutionary act?

A

An utterance with a particular sense and reference (basically the sum of its parts).

221
Q

What is the illocutionary act?

A

The act (defined by social convention) that is performed by making the utterance: a statement, offer, promise, bet etc.

222
Q

What is the perlocutionary act?

A

The (not necessarily intentional) effects on the audience, whether indended or unintended, brought about by the utterance.

223
Q

What are Grice’s maxims of conversation?

A

Rules of conversation that describe the shared rule speakers use in interactions

  • Quantity
  • Quality
  • Relevance
  • Manner
224
Q

What is Grice’s maxim regarding quantity?

A
  • Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as necessary
  • Do not make your contribution to the conversation more informative than necessary
225
Q

What is Grice’s maxim regarding quality?

A
  • Do not say what you believe to be false
  • Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
226
Q

What is Grice’s maxim regarding relevance?

A

Say only things that are relevant.

227
Q

What is Grice’s maxim regarding manner?

A
  • Avoid obscurity of expression
  • Avoid ambiguity
  • Be brief (avoid unnecessary wordiness)
  • Be orderly
228
Q

What is positive politeness?

A

Politeness strategy based on the speaker’s constructing solidarity with the addressee.

  • Claims common ground with the hearer
  • Conveys sense of cooperation with hearer
  • May offer sympathy, a compliment, optimism…
229
Q

What is negative politeness?

A

Politeness strategy based on the speaker’s minimizing imposition on the addressee.

  • Makes no assumptions about hearer’s needs, desires, or abilities to cooperate
  • Tries not to impose needs on hearer
  • Is often pessimistic, deferential, and impersonal
230
Q

What are honorifics?

A

Grammatical foms usually words or affixes, that express the relative social status of the speaker to the addressee.

231
Q

What is definiteness?

A

The difference between “a” and “the.” Means by which the speaker indicates to the hearer that they share knowledge of the referent of a particular noun phrase.

232
Q

What are deictic words?

A

Words whose meaning scan be interpreted only with reference to the speaker’s position in space and time.

  • Personal diectics (my, yours)
  • Temporal deictics (now, tomorrow, verb tenses)
  • Spacial deictics (there, behind, left, right)
233
Q

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

A

Benjamin Whorf’s claim that language determines our perceptions of the world.

Linguistic Relativity

234
Q

What was the discovery of William Jones?

A

He discovered the relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. He’s the orgin of the idea of PIE.

235
Q

What is Grimm’s Law?

A

System of regular sound correspondences, discovered by Jacob Grimm, that distinguishes Germanic languages from others in Indo-European family; also called the First Sound Shift.

236
Q

What are some regular sound correspondences?

A

/p/–/f/

/b/–/f/

/d/–/t/

/g/–/k/

/t/–/th/

237
Q

What is the brief history of English?

A
  • Anglo-Saxons (Germanic tribes) drive the native Celts to the hinterlands and beyond (AD 449-1100)
  • Subsequent incursions by Norse raiders (Vikings)
    • the Danelaw
  • Old English (OE) a highly inflected language
  • the Norman Conquest (AD 1066)
    • the beginnings of Middle English (ME)
    • French loan words
    • Great Vowel Shift, (Ch. 3, and Moodle)
  • Early Modern English (1500-1800)
    • “Correct” English and prescriptivism
238
Q

What are the Indo-European Language Families?

A
  • Indo-Iranian
  • Hellenic
  • Celtic
  • Italic
  • Baltic-Slavic
  • Germanic
239
Q

What is sociolinguistics?

A

Study of how language varies over space (by region, ethnicity, social class, etc)

240
Q

What are the four American dialects?

A
  • New England
  • Midwestern
  • Western
  • Southern
241
Q

What is an isogloss?

A

Geographical boundary of a particular linguistic feature.

242
Q

What are some examples of loanwords?

A

Chocolate – Nahautl

Kayak – Inuit

Caribou – Micmac

Algonquian – Cree

243
Q

What are some ethnic dialects of English?

A
  • AAVE
  • Chicano
  • Native American English
244
Q

What are communities of practice?

A

Group whose members came together and share activities, beliefs, and perceptions.

245
Q

What is a pictogram?

A

Pictures or symbols that represent an object or idea.

246
Q

What is an ideogram?

A

Symbol that represents an idea.

(Peace sign)

247
Q

What is a syllabary?

A

System of writing based on syllable sounds.

248
Q

What type of logogram is hieroglyphics?

A

It is phonographic, meaning the symbols represent sounds.

249
Q

What is important about Cuneiform?

A

It’s conained on stone tablets wrapped in envelopes.

Began as pictographic system and became more abstract.

250
Q

What’s important about the Phoenician writing system?

A

It was a system of consonants that was the ancestor of Semitic and Greek writing systems.

251
Q

What is Boustrophedon?

A

Writing as the ox plows.

252
Q

What is futhorc?

A

Runes

253
Q

What is Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language?

A

The authority for lots of spelling.

Classes (11 decks)

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