Vocabulary and Terminology Flashcards
Learn definitions.
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
The process through which informations communicated, consisting of an information source, transmitter, signal, receiver and destination.
Speech Communication Chain Steps
Think of what you want to communicate
Pick out words to express the idea
Put these words in a certain order following rules
Figure out how to pronounce these words
Send those pronunciations to your vocal anatomy
Speak: send the sounds through the air
Perceive: listener hears the sounds
Decode: listener interprets sounds as language
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 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.
Mental Grammar
The mental representation of grammar. The knowledge that a speaker has about the linguistic units and rules of her native language.
Language Variation
The property of language 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 speaker’s knowledge of a language (competence) based on their use of the language (performance).
Evidence that writing and language are not the same (list 4 reasons)
- Writing does not exist everywhere that spoken language does.
- Writing can be edited
- writing must be taught
- Archeological evidence indicates that writing is a later historical development than spoken language
Reasons some people believe writing to be superior to speech (list 3 reasons)
- writing can be edited and therefore contains fewer errors, hesitations, pauses, filler words, false starts and incomplete sentences than speech.
- Writing is more physically stable and therefore more permanent than speech.
- Writing must be taught and therefore is associated with education and educated speech.
Prescriptive Grammar
A set of rules designed to give instructions regarding the socially embedded notion of the “correct” or “proper” way to speak or write.
Prescribe
Tell you how you “should” speak or write, according to someone’s idea of what is “good” or “bad”.
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
