Topic 7 - Language Flashcards
What is language?
The key to a cultural identity. Necessary in the process of enculturation. Also helps preservation and transmission of culture.
Define “communication.”
Process of sending and recieving messages. Different from language.
Define “language.”
A set of symbols (oral/written) and signs with learned and shared meanings. Code and complex.
Define “dialect.”
A sub variety of language associated with a region, group, ethnicity, etc…
What is openness?
The ability to talk about the same experience with different words and grammatical constructions.
What is displacement?
The ability to refer to things that are not present in the here and now or that do not exist.
What is prevarication?
The ability to tell lies or say things that do no make sense.
What are phonemes?
Sounds. Language does not use all possible sounds nor do they combine them the same way.
What are morphemes?
Smallest meaning-bearing units. Words can be broken down in smaller elements that each make sense on their own.
What is syntax?
Sentence building. How languages build sentences.
What is an isolating lanugage?
Short words. One separate word for every grammatical element.
What is a synthetic language?
Longer words. Words include root and grammatical elements such as in French. (je parlerai).
What are agglutinative languages?
Words can be very long (swahili example). Juxtaposition of a root and many grammatical elements.
What is the saphir-whorf hypothesis?
People’s languages effect how they think. Native languages define and guide our perception of the world. Culture shapes language.
What is sociolinguistics?
Language is connected to social classes and relations of power.
What are some examples of sociolinguistics?
Code-switching in academia, switching between two languages or 2 varieties of the same language. The “n-word” as a deragatory term.
What are some characteristics of written language?
The one we learn in school. Legitimate, official, standardized. Standard form used by everyone.
What are the characteristics of spoken language?
Does no correspond to the standard language. Used by minority, changes more quickly than written. Also follows rules.
How many languages are spoken around the world today?
Around 6600
What can cause an emergence of languages?
Rise in population, dispersion on territory and isolation in different environments.
What is interference in relation to a change in language?
The integration of foreign words.
What can cause a language to die?
Conquests and colonization, nationalist policies of assimilation, globalization.
