Module 14 Flashcards

Question

Lucas et al 2013

Answer 1

-Research goals: ~Empirical description of features of Black ASL ~Explore social and historical conditions which led to the development of this variety *Consider potential contact effects between English and ASL **2 different languages *Consider potential contact effects between Black ASL and AAE **"Non-standard" varieties of 2 different languages **Using videotaped corpus of 96 African-American signers in the southern US -Historical explanation for the existence of Black ASL ~"the prolonged segregation of Black and White students in the southern schools for the deaf, as well as the lack of educational opportunities for Black deaf students in some states, created the conditions for the development of separate variety of ASL" *Anecdotal evidence of language differences from signers who started in segregated schools and transferred to integrated schools -Contact between ASL and English ~Mouthing of English words while signing ~"mouthing" refers to mouthing words from the spoken language *NOT the same as 'mouth gestures' (like frowns) which are meaningful components of the sign language *Mouthing has been observed in many sign languages worldwide *Mouthing is associated with focus on 'oralism' in education -Mouthing variation ~Parts of words vs whole words ~Continuous vs intermittent ~Mouthing correlated with grammatical class *Nouns, adjectives, and uninflected verbs seem to be mouthed more than other types of words *Directional verbs, pronouns and classifiers are mouthed less -Mouthing anecdotally associated with White signers -Lucas et al considered ~Race/ethnicity: Black vs White signers ~Age: between older 9pre-intregration) and younger signers (post0intergration) ~Gender: male vs female ~Grammatical categories -Findings ~Nouns most likely to be mouthed, function words least likely to be mouthed ~More 'continuous' mouthing in young females, young White males, and old White people ~More 'intermittent' mouthing in older Black people and young black males *"age effect among the Black signers and a gender effect between the younger Black women and younger Black males" *Unclear if Black signers mouth less the White signers, in general *But "older Black signers of both genders mouth markedly less than other signers" -Contact between AAE and Black ASL ~Focus on lexical items from AAE *Discuss examples from younger speakers (post-integration) **Younger speakers more likely to have access to AAE in the media than the older generation ~Incorporation of AAE lexical features into Black ASL *TRPI/TRIPPING *Same as regular sign for 'trip,' but made near the head **Indicating mental 'tripping' ~Incorporation of AAE lexical features into Black ASL *Please *Girl Please ~Incorporation of AAE lexical features into Black ASL *My Bad *"One participant contrasted this to how White signers might sign it, that is, the sign MY and the sign BAD in sequence, as opposed to the separate lexical item shown by the Black signer" -Signers also noted that Black signers seem to use space differently ~"by shifting their bodies markedly one side, exaggerating the movement and expanding the size of the signing space" -These were noted by signers when asked if their variety is different from ASL ~"Do Black people sign differently than White people?" ~So there signs were produced in a 'meta-linguistic context' rather than being spontaneously produced "folk" or "perceptual" sociolinguistics

Answer 2

-Is the symbolic representation of language through the use of graphic signs ~A system in which visual symbol represent components of language: sound, morphemes, words, and/ or concepts -Writing systems represent spoken language (and less commonly, signed language) ~Spoken and signed languages emerged long before writing systems were developed ~Spoken language likely developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago *Lack of physical evidence for spoken language makes it hard to determine exactly when it first emerged *We do have evidence of physical development of vocal tracts and evidence of groups of humans living together -The first evidence of writing is found in Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C. (about 5500 years ago) between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern day Iraq) ~This was CUNEIFORM, which was marked on clay tablets ~Wedge-shaped symbols used to represent trade goods and livestock ~Developed by the Sumerians ~Sumerians used lcay tokens of different shapes as part of a counting system for trade purposes as far back as 8000 B.C. ~Eventually, instead of using actual tokens, they just marked the shape of the token in clay, with different shapes having different meanings *The development of writing coincided in time and location with the rise of urban centers such as Uruk, Nippur, Susa, and Ur *Initially used primarily for record keeping and accounting, then was found to be useful in other ways -By 2250 B.C., the priestess-post Enheduanna wrote her famous hymns to Inanna in the Sumerian city of Ur ~Cuneiform had advanced from simple record-keeping to being able to write poetry and refer to abstract concepts such as emotional states -All of the major Mesopotamian civilizations (the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians, Hurrians, and other) adopted and used cuneiform (sometimes in different forms) ~Cuneiform can refer to any wedge-shaped writing

Answer 3

-3000 B.C.: Egyptians developed writing systems -1200 B.C.: Chinese developed writing systems ~Unclear if these were influenced by Sumerian writing systems, or if they developed independently -300 B.C.: Evidence of writing in Mesoamerica (Mexico and central America) ~Believed to have developed independently from other writing systems -Around 100 B.C. cuneiform is abandoned in favor of an alphabetic script -Around 1000 A.D., a formal list of the Old English alphabet was created -In the mid-1800s A.D., cuneiform was deciphered and translated

Answer 4

- To keep track and storage of goods - To record important events in a way that was less likely to be forgotten or distorted than oral accounts - To communicate across distances: a messenger would deliver a letter to an addressee - To record rules and laws - A human desire to have a more permanent record of things

Answer 5

-Writing is not a fundamental part of language ~Literacy is a skill associated with language, but literacy is not required to use a language ~Many linguists focus on spoken/signed language rather than written language -Not all languages have a written form ~In fact, many don't!

Answer 6

-There are a little over 30 writing systems in regular use today ~Compared to the nearly 7000 languages in use today *At least 3000 of these languages do NOT have writing systems at all *Of those languages that do have writing systems, many of them aren't widely used (have low literacy rate)

Answer 7

-During the Middle Ages the English were very suspicious of written land-sale contracts because they could be tampered with

Answer 8

-Sometimes strong social pressures prohibit writing down certain materials: ~the Warm Spring tribe in Organ regard any attempt to make written records of their traditional religious songs as offensive. It would violate their sacredness ~There are similar beliefs regarding the Towa language spoken in Jemez Pueblo

Answer 9

-A status symbol associated with wealth/ education ~Only the rich have the opportunity to learn to read and write ~This is true in American culture, even today *There are barriers preventing people living in poverty and minorities from attaining literacy **Literacy is an important factor in economic success

Answer 10

``` -Types of writing systems ~Pictograms ~Ideograms ~Logograms ~Phonographic writing ~Syllabic writing ~Alphabetic writing ```

Answer 11

-Early cave drawings are not considered to be linguistic in nature- they are more like art than language ~However, there is some evidence to suggest that conceptually, cave drawings are similar to writing *Ancient humans may have drawn pictures that represented natural sounds, or abstract thought processes **The same way writing represents speech sounds *Ancient cave art is not considered writing because it does not seem to represent languages itself (which is what writing does) -When pictures represent images or meanings in a consistent way ~Pictograms were used at least 3000 years ago *Earliest form of cuneiform were pictograms ~Pictograms are generally language-independent and can be understood by people of different language backgrounds *But they can be culturally-dependent, and so may not always be universally understood ~They represent the physical forms of objects, but we usually interpret them to mean more than the object itself *pictogram of cigarette might mean "smoking is allowed"

Answer 12

-When pictograms develop into more abstract, symbolic forms ~If the symbol looks like a picture of an object, it's a pictogram ~If it's more abstract, it's an ideogram

Answer 13

-Some scolars call pictographic and ideographic writing "proto-writing" ~Conceptual symbols rather than language-based writing -"True" writing would correspond with the exact utterance in spoken language- represents exactly what is being side ~It is believed that many symbols in later writing systems evolved from pictograms and ideograms

Answer 14

-When symbols are used to represent words in a language ~The relationship between the symbol and the meaning is typically arbitrary (or at least abstract) ~The oldest evidence we have of logographic writing is CUNEIFORM, which evolved from pictographic writing to logographic writing over time ~We have logograms in modern-day languages *In English **&, %, $, @ **Each symbol represents a word in English -Chinese has one of the oldest surviving writing systems in the world (as far as we know, about 3000-4000 years) -Many characters in modern Chinese are logograms

Answer 15

Over time, in the development of many writing systems, symbols began being used in similar way if certain words had similar sounds, rather than similar meanings ~In this development, symbols began to be used to represent the sounds of words ~The symbol for an entity begins to be used as the symbol for the sound of the word (rather than the word itself) ~The symbol then comes to be used whenever that sound is used *ti = arrow *ti = life *The symbol began to be used for both meanings (Sumerian) -We see this process in modern English texting ~2 is used not only to mean the number 2, but other homophonic forms (to, two, too), and even as the same sound in other words *Let's go 2 the store 2gether 2dat *In fact, many languages have elements of phonographic writing

Answer 16

-When a writing system employs a set of symbols which each represent a syllable ~A syllabic writing system is called a SYLLABARY ~There are not purely syllabic writing systems in use today *"pure: in the sense that every possible syllable in the language is accounted for -Fun Fact: Hermione used a syllabary (Spekkman's syllabary) to translate her copy of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," which was written in ancient runes ~Wizards in the Harry Potter universe also have personal runes, and we see them used to identify prisoners in Azkaban ~Runes were used by early Anglo-Saxons as a writing system (~500-1000 CE) ~Commonly associated with witches, wizards, magicians ~There are different types of runic writing systems which can be syllabic, alphabetic, or logographic -Cosider the case of Cherokee ~Before the early 1800s, Cherokee was only spoken ~Sequoyah developed a syllabary around 1809-1820 ~Each symbol represents a syllable ~Arabic numerals are used -Some forms of cuneiform had syllabic elements (those used by the Sumerians and Akkadians -Tamil (spoken in India) is written with a syllabic system of 246 symbols -Chinese is sometimes called "logosyllabic," as it has elements of logographic and syllabic writing, or "morphographic" as the symbols can be argued to represent morphemes rather than words or syllables -The writing system for the ancient language of Mycenean Greek was syllabic -Syllabic systems work well for some languages, not so much for others. -Why would a syllabic system be problematic for English? ~English has over 15,000 syllables

Answer 17

-Sequoyah's syllabary came to be widely used among the Cherokee and was formally adopted in 1825 (just 4 years after its invention) ~The symbols resemble letters from other alphabets, but the correspondence between symbol and sound is not the same -Cherokee speakers' literacy rate quickly surpassed their European-American neighbors ~Around 90% literacy among all Cherokee by the end of the 1800s *Only white, upper-class, urban males had that high of literacy rate at the time -Sequoyah's invention of the Cherokee syllabary is one of the only known instances of a member of a pre-literate speech community independently inventing a writing system ~Shong Lue Yang was another; he invented the Pahawh script to write the Hmong and Khmu languages in the 1950s *Spoken in China, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand

Answer 18

-If symbols are used to represent single sounds (phonemes) in a language ~An ALPHABET is a set of writing symbols corresponding to a single sound ~In a CONSONANTAL ALPHABET, symbols represent consonantal sounds-readers supply the vowels through context *Hebrew, Arabic *Some argue this is more syllabic than alphabetic -The earliest consonantal alphabet seems to have been developed 3000 years ago by the Phoenicians (around 1000 B.C.) ~The early alphabet is the basic source of most other alphabets in the world -Greeks took the Phoenician symbols and added vowels -From the Greeks, the revised alphabet passed to the rest of Western Europe through the Romans- hence the "Roman Alphabet" for the writing system we use in English -The same basic Greek system passed to Eastern Europe and became the "Cyrillic Alphabet" used in Russia today

Answer 19

-In a 'pure' alphabet, each sound (phoneme) will correspond with a letter ~As in Spanish -The English alphabet writing system is not as 'pure' ~We often use multiple symbols to represent one sound *Consider the English word "through"- there are 6 symbols but: [ðoʊ] sound ~Different symbols/ combinations of symbols are used to represent one sound *Suger, tiSSue, spaniSH, emoTIon -> [ʃ] ~English words are not always spelled the way they sound *"tough" vs "puff"

Answer 20

-English is full of words that are borrowed, spelling and all, from other languages ~bEAU - French ~alPHabet, orthograPHY - Greek *A combination of two letters consistently used for a single sound is called a DIGRAPH **ph- [f], sh - [ʃ] -Also, the spelling of english is largely fixed in the form that was used when printing was introduced into the 15th century England ~Many conventions were derived from other languages *qu instead of cw because of French *Doute became doubt because spelling reformers thought it was closer to Latin -Many early printers were native speakers of Flemish, not English, so they did not make consistent judgments regarding pronunciation ~Old English: gast ~Flemish: gheest ~Modern English: ghost -Writing conventions which are standard today were not always so ~For a long time, various spellings were used depending on who was writing ~Writing conventions weren't standardized until after the advent of printing (~1500s) -Most importantly, the pronunciation of spoken English has undergone significant change, while writing conventions have remained largely the same ~When the writing system was developed, the sounds in words often DID typically correspond to the way they were spelled ~We used to pronounce all of the sounds in words like "knight"