Theories and Facts Flashcards
What is the difference between a language and a dialect?
Languages are unintelligible from speaker to speaker while dialects are intelligible
How do politics affect the definition of a language?
mutually intelligible varieties across political boundaries may be labelled as different languages
Why do politics want to define languages and dialects?
Provides a sense of unity or pride / differentiates the people of a region
How is orthography a factor of mutual intelligibility?
mutually intelligible varieties may use a different orthographic system (alphabet)
OR
mutually unintelligible varieties may use the same orthographic system
What are the linguistic reasons for asymmetric mutual intelligibility?
Certain kinds of sound changes make it difficult to understand a linguistic variety
What are the historical reasons for asymmetric intelligibility?
speakers of one language are exposed to the other but not vice versa
What is the conundrum with the dialect continuum?
It is unclear where to place a boundary between varieties because:
- some speakers in the continuum do not understand each other
- most nearby speakers understand each other but not necessarily end to end of a geographic region
What is the total number of languages?
~7000
How many languages have <100 000 speakers?
~5000
How many languages have <10 000 speakers?
~3000
How often does language death occur?
Once every 3 months
How are language death and language change different?
Languages can survive through other languages, for example how Latin survived through the Romance languages. This is an example of language change rather than language death as Latin words are still used
Why is typological classification important?
It helps determine the limits of a language including the study of what the brain is and isn’t capable of when it comes to interpreting language
What is the difference between typological and genetic language classification?
typological explores what properties languages have in common while genetic looks at how they are related ancestrally
Examples of language universals
All languages:
- exhibit linguistic creativity
-have stops
-have vowels
-have stress
-have morphology
Examples of universal tendencies
- syllable structure obeys the sonority principle of rising sonority towards the nucleus and falling after it (Exception: Russian)
- the most common stops phonemes are /p, t, k/ (Exception: Hawaiian lacks /t/)
- most languages have fricatives (Exception: Hawaiian)
Examples of implicational universals
- the presence of front unrounded vowels implies the presence of front unrounded vowels
- the presence of nasal vowel phonemes implies the presence of oral vowel phonemes
- the presence of inflectional affixes implies the presence of derivational affixes
what is the history of the english language?
proto-germanic –> proto-west-germanic –> old english –> middle english –> modern english
how are the eras of english divided?
all divisions are arbitrary and approximate
how do language families come about?
a linguistic community splits up and each side continues to evolve separately resulting in the loss of mutual intelligibility
Indo-european subfamilies
-germanic (english)
-romance
-balto-slavic
-indo-aryan
-greek
-albanian
-etc.
how does sound change affect language
it reduces the intelligibility between varieties that undergo the change and varieties that do not
how does sound change occur?
sound change is regular and systematic, as it does not usually occur word by word
how does assimilation occur?
some property of a segment is passed on to an adjacent segment, motivated by coarticulation
how does dissimilation occur?
somewhat uncommon, motivated by perceptual contrast
when is lenition common?
when adjacent to a vowel or sonorant
how did the Great English Vowel Shift affect vowels?
affected long vowels
-high –> diphthongs
-mid –> high
-low –> mid front
What chain shift did Grimm’s Law create?
voiceless stops –> voiceless fricatives
voiced stops –> voiceless stop
breathy voiced stops –> voiced stops
How is there an infinite number of grammatical sentences?
Most grammatical sentences are unattested
Are all sentences syntactically grammatical?
No
What is the distribution of a noun?
With determiner
What is the distribution of a verb?
With auxilliary
What is the distribution of an adjective
With degree word
What is the distribution of an adverb
With degree word
What is the distribution of a preposition
With noun phrase
What is the distribution of a determiner
With noun
What are examples of lexical categories?
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
What characterizes a lexical category?
Tend to be open and easy to update/expand
What are examples of functional categories?
determiners, degree words, prepositions
What characterizes functional categories?
usually closed and difficult to update/expand
What is the concept of constituency?
within a phrase, some words are more closely connected to each other than to other words
Can words be constituents?
A single word is always a constituent, constituents can vary in length
What information does constituency carry?
Tells us something about the grammatical structure of the sentence
How can you test constituency?
Substitution, movement, and coordination tests
What is the substitution test?
If X can be replaced with Y without affecting the grammaticality or syntactic structure of the sentence, then X and Y are constituents and share the same syntactic properties
What is the movement test?
If a phrase can be moved to a different part of the sentence and the sentence remains grammatical, it is a constituent
What is the coordination test?
constituents of the same type can be coordinated using a coordinating conjunction such as and/or
What is the merge operation?
constituents can be nested in other constituents because of language creativity
When can syntax tree shorthand be used?
When the internal structure of a constituent is not important
Are sentences constituents?
yes
What is the theory of syntactic ambiguity?
the same string of words can correspond to different syntactic structures, therefore the meaning is related to the structure
What is a clause?
a constituent that contains a subject and a verb
What is inversion?
movement of a T to C position in questions
What is movement?
movement can happen in different circumstances for different reasons, often to satisfy some sort of abstract feature
How does movement alter syntactic properties?
it doesn’t, if a phrase moves, the phrase structure is preserved
What is the implication of the movement operation?
there are two levels of syntactic structure: deep structure (before movement) and surface structure (after movement)
How do Wh-questions work?
The Wh-word bears the same syntactic properties as the information sought in the answer
What is the assumption of Wh-movement?
WH-questions start out with the same word order as statements, difference in word order is a result of movement
Can meaning be derived from truth conditions?
Yes
Does a sentence have to be true for its truth conditions to be compatible with the real world?
no
What is entailment?
X entails Y if when X is true Y is also true, and Y does not introduce any information not contained in X
What is equivalence?
X is equivalent to Y if X entails Y and Y entails X
What is contradiction?
X contradicts Y if when X is true Y is false, and when Y is true X is false
What is contrariety?
X is contrary to Y is when X is true Y is false
What is presupposition?
X presupposes Y ifX entails Y regardless if X is true
How do pronouns function?
context-dependent, refer to a salient element in the conversation
What are context dependent adjectives?
adjectives describe a value on a scale, the relevant portion of the scale depends on the noun
What is implicature?
deriving meaning from a sentence that is from neither entailment or presupposition
Can implicature be violated?
Yes
What is the maxim of relevance
be relevant to the goal of the conversation
what is the maxim of quanitity?
say as much as is required by the goal of the conversation
what is the maxim of quality
do not say what you think is false and do not say what you lack evidence for
what is the maxim of manner?
make your contribution as clear as possible
How do newborns perceive acoustic contrasts?
As equally different
when do children’s perception become attuned to the phonological contrasts of their language specifically?
8 months
When is the babbling stage?
6-12 months
What is the babbling stage?
necessary for linguistic development, no linguistically marked structures
how are phonemes acquired?
vowels are articulated before consonants, stops acquired first, onsets acquired before codas
What are early phonetic processes?
immature productions of particular words that reflect a child’s inability to produce certain sounds or certain phonological structures
Are early phonetic processes seen as grammatical?
no
What is syllable deletion?
Unstressed syllables are often deleted from the output
What is syllable simplification?
syllable structure is repaired through deletion of the more sonorant element
What is substition?
processes affecting properties of segments rather than individual segments, including stopping, fronting, gliding, and denasalization
What is assimilation in infant speech?
Voiced obstruents are more common than voiceless obstruents in the speech of children
What is the vocab development at 18 months
around 50 words
What is the vocab development between 1.5-6 years old?
rapid acquisition, around 14,000 words
What are general trends in vocabulary?
nouns first, words with concrete meanings before words with abstract meanings, lexical items before functional items
Why is acquiring new words difficult?
- the world is full of objects and properties
- natural phenomena are gradient and typically not clearly delineated
- many words do not refer to observable phenomena
What are errors in word-meaning acquisition
overextension and underextension
What are the stages of morphological overgeneralization?
- words are memorized whole
- inflectional morphology overgeneralized
- adult-like morphology
= U-shaped learning
What is the one-word stage in the development of syntax?
1-1.5 yo, one word used to convey an entire utterance, typically the most informative word in the utterance
What is the two-word stage in the development of syntax?
1.5-2 yo, limited sentential patterns, almost complete absence of functional items
What is the telegraphic stage in the development of syntax?
2-2.5 yo, longer sentences with some functional items, inflectional morphology missing
What information does speech carry?
Information about the meaning and about the speaker
What is the concept of free variation?
random variation from the perspective of phonology, but no variation is truly free or random
What factors influence free variation?
sociolinguistic: what variety you speak, who you are speaking to, what the situation is
other: mood, blood-alcohol level, etc.
what is an unreleased stop?
no release following a stop, complete silence
how are unreleased stops used in English?
in word-final positions
What are examples of speech communities from across sociological dimensions?
geography, age, socio-economic class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation
Can grammar differ within a speech community?
yes because of idolects
How is geographic separation linguistic separation?
the farther someone is, the harder it is to communicate with them, and eventually dialects become languages as mutual intelligibility decreases over time
What is the assumption of variation over time?
individuals generally do not alter their speech over time
How are linguistic prestige and socioeconomic class correlated?
Higher prestige is associated with higher class, speakers slightly below the highest strata often overcompensate with prestige in social situations
How are class and gender related?
changes from above are associated with female leadership and changes from below are associated with male leadership
