Vocabulary and Terminology Flashcards
Linguistic competence
What we know when we know a language; the unconscious knowledge that a speaker has about her or his native language.
Linguistic performance
The observable use of language. The actualization of one’s linguistic competence.
Performance error
Errors in language production or comprehension, including hesitations and slips of the tongue.
Speech communication chain
Communication chain: The process through which information is communicated, consisting of an information source, transmitter, signal, receiver, and destination.
Speech communication chain steps
1.Think of what you want to communicate 2.Pick out words to express the idea 3.Put these words together in a certain order following rules 4.Figure out how to pronounce these words 5.Send those pronunciations to your vocal anatomy 6.Speak: send the sounds through the air 7.Perceive: listener hears the sounds 8.Decode: listener interprets sounds as language 9.Connect: listener receives communicated idea
Noise
Interference in the communication chain.
Lexicon
A mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form and meaning and their morphological and syntactic properties. As a part of a descriptive, not mental, grammar, the lexicon is the representation of the mental lexicon, consisting of lexical entries that capture the relevant properties of lexical expressions (e.g., their form and syntactic category).
Mental grammar
The mental representation of grammar. The knowledge that a speaker has about the linguistic units and rules of his native language.
Language variation
The property of languages having different ways to express the same meanings in different contexts according to factors such as geography, social class, gender, etc.
Descriptive grammar
Objective description of a speaker’s or a group of speakers’ knowledge of a language (competence) based on their use of the language (performance).
Evidence that writing and and language are not the same (4 reasons)
1.Writing must be taught (spoken language is acquired naturally) 2.Writing does not exist everywhere that spoken language does 3.Writing can be edited (speech is usually much more spontaneous) 4.Archeological evidence indicates that writing is a later historical development than spoken language
Reasons some people believe writing to be superior to speech (3 reasons)
1.Writing can be edited (while speech is spontaneous) 2.Writing must be taught (and is therefore intimately associated with education and educated speech) 3.Writing is more physically stable than spoken language (and tends to last)
Mode of communication
Means through which a message is transmitted for any given communication system.
Prescribe
Prescriptive rules: tell you how you “should” speak or write, according to someone’s idea of what is “good” or “bad.”
Pragmatic function
The useful purpose of any given communication system.
Interchangeability
The property of a communication system by which all individuals have the ability to both transmit and review messages (as opposed to systems where some individuals can only send messages and others can only receive messages).
Cultural transmission
Property of a communication system referring to the fact that at least some aspects of it are learned through interaction with other users of the system.
Arbitrariness
In relation to language, refers to the fact that a word’s meaning is not predictable from its linguistic form, nor is its form dictated by its meaning.
Linguistic sign
The combination of a linguistic form and meaning.
Convention
Conventionalized: something that is established, commonly agreed upon, or operating in a certain way according to common practice. When an arbitrary relationship of a linguistic sign and its meaning is conventionalized, the linguistic sign bears a constant relationship only because people consistently use that linguistic sign to convey that meaning.
Nonarbitrariness
Direct correspondence between the physical properties of a form and the meaning that the form refers to.
Iconic
Iconicity: Relationship between form and meaning such that the form of a word bears a resemblance to its meaning.
Onomatopoeia
Iconic use of words that are imitative of sounds occurring in nature or that have meanings that are associated with such sounds.
Conventionalized
Something that is established, commonly agreed upon, or operating in a certain way according to common practice. When an arbitrary relationship of a linguistic sign bears a constant relationship only because people consistently use that linguistic sign to convey that meaning.
