Vocab List - 9/6/2020 Flashcards
linguistic competence
The measure of how much someone understands the use and speak of a certain language.
linguistic performance
The ability to produce and comprehend sentences in a language.
performance error
Performance errors are errors made by learners when they are tired or hurried.
speech communication chain
The different forms in which a spoken message exists in its progress from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener.
speech communication chain steps
- Linguistic level
- Physiological level
- Acoustic level
- Physiological level
- Linguistic level
noise
This is when grammar or technical language is used that the receiver cannot understand, or cannot understand clearly and is normally the failure of the sender to communicate effectively.
lexicon
A language’s inventory of lexemes.
mental grammar
Generative grammar stored in the brain that allows a speaker to produce language that other speakers can understand
language variation
Changes in language due to various influences including, social, geographic, individual and group factors.
descriptive grammar
An approach to grammar that is concerned with reporting the usage of native speakers without reference to proposed norms of correctness or advocacy of rules based on such norms. This is most concerned with how you speak.
evidence that writing and language are not the same (list 4 reasons)
- Throughout history, almost everybody could speak but few could write.
- Writing is a method of language.
- Writing can be independent of language.
- Writing doesn’t convey messages in the way that spoken language does.
reasons some people believe writing to be superior to speech (list 3 reasons)
reasons some people believe writing to be superior to speech (list 3 reasons)
prescriptive grammar
A set of rules about language based on how people think language should be used. In a prescriptive grammar there is right and wrong language and it is focused on how you ought to speak.
prescribe
The attempt to establish rules defining preferred or correct use of language
Charles Hockett’s nine design features (necessary for a communication system to be considered a language) (list)
- Mode of Communication
- Semanticity
- Pragmatic function
- Interchangeability
- Cultural Transmission
- Arbitrariness
- Discreteness
- Displacement
- Productivity
mode of communication
The medium or channel through which communicative intent is expressed.
semanticity
A fixed relationship between a signal and a meaning.
pragmatic function
The meaning a speaker wishes to convey to the person they are speaking to (the receiver).
interchangeability
The speaker can both receive and broadcast the same signal.
cultural transmission
The process of learning and teaching, characterised by the transmission of a behaviour from one organism to another by physical demonstration such that between human beings.
arbitrariness
There is no necessary connection between the form of the signal and the thing being referred to.
linguistic sign
Any unit of language (morpheme, word, phrase, or sentence) used to designate objects or phenomena of reality which are bilateral; they consist of a signifier, made up of speech sounds (more precisely, phonemes), and a signified, created by the linguistic sign’s sense content.
convention
A principle or norm that has been adopted by a person or linguistic community about how to use, and therefore what the meaning is, of a specific term.
nonarbitrariness
There is a necessary connection between the form of the signal and the thing being referred to.
iconic
Iconicity is a relationship of resemblance or similarity between the two aspects of a sign: its form and its meaning.
onomatopoeia
The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named.
conventionalized
Represented in a traditional or conventional way.
sound symbolism
The apparent association between particular sound sequences and particular meanings in speech.
discreteness
The idea that linguistic representation can be broken down individually into separate, small and distinct units after which they can be combined with other similar units to create new representations.
displacement
A characteristic of language that allows users to talk about things and events other than those occurring in the here and now.
productivity
The degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. There is an ability to produce infinite numbers of different messages by combining the elements differently.
modality
Linguistic devices that indicate the degree to which an observation is possible, probable, likely, certain, permitted, or prohibited
myths about signed languages (list 4)
- Sign language is universal
- Sign language only uses your hands
- American Sign Language is based on English.
- Sign language was invented by hearing people.
differences between codes and languages (list 4)
- Codes assign letters or numbers as identifiers for language.
- Language assigns meaning to speech for all to understand whereas codes are meant to be arbitrary.
- Codes do not represent meaning, they simply either facilitate or obscure the transfer of the meaning.
- Code allows for signs to be created whereas language assigns meaning to sounds.
