Vocabulary and terminology chapter 1

Question 1

Linguistic competence:

Answer 1

What we know when we know a language; unconscious knowledge that a speaker has about their native language.

Question 2

Linguistic performance:

Answer 2

The observable use of language. The actualization (making a reality) of one’s linguistic competence (or knowledge).

Question 3

Performance error:

Answer 3

Errors in language production or comprehension, including hesitations and slips of the tongue.

Question 4

Speech communication chain:

Answer 4

The process through which information is communicated consisting of an information source, transmitter signal, receiver, and destination.

Question 5

Speech communication chain steps:

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Noise:

Answer 6

Interference in the communication chain.

Question 7

Lexicon:

Answer 7

The vocabulary of a person, language or branch of knowledge. (The size of the English Lexicon) A mental repository (location in which data is stored or managed) of linguistic information about words and other expressions including the form, meaning, morphological and syntactic properties.

Question 8

Mental grammar:

Answer 8

The mental representations of grammar. The knowledge that a speaker has about the linguistic units and rules of his native language.

Question 9

Language variation:

Answer 9

The property of languages having different ways to express the same meanings in different contexts according to factors such as geography, social class, etc.

Question 10

Descriptive grammar:

Answer 10

Contains the rules that someone has deduced based on observing speakers’ linguistic performance. Collections of generalizations. Objective description of a speaker’s knowledge of a language based on their use of the language

Question 11

Evidence that writing and language are not the same

Answer 11

Writing is the representation of language in a physical medium different from sound.
Spoken language encodes thought into a physically transmittable form.
Writing encodes spoken language into a physically preservable form.
Writing is a three-stage process: thinking of an idea, expressing it using mental grammar, and then transferring it to written form.
1. Archaeological evidence: indicates that writing is a later development than spoken language.
2. Writing does not exist everywhere that spoken language does.
3. Writing must be taught, whereas spoken language is acquired naturally.
4. Neurolinguistic evidence: demonstrates that the processing and production of written language is overlaid on the spoken language centers in the brain.

Question 12

Reasons some people believe writing to be superior to speech (list 3 reasons)

Answer 12

Writing seems more correct and stable
Speech can seem more careless, corrupted and susceptible to change.
Some people even go as far to identify language with writing and to regard speech as a secondary form of language used imperfectly to approximate the ideals of the written language.

Question 13

Prescriptive grammar:

Answer 13

Correct and proper ways to use a language.

Question 14

Prescribe:

Answer 14

How to speak or write according to someone’s ideas of good or bad.

Question 15

Charles Hockett’s nine design features (necessary for a communication system to be considered a language)

Answer 15

Mode of communication
Semanticity
Pragmatic function
Interchangeability
Cultural Transmission
Arbitrariness
Discreteness
Displacement
Productivity

Question 16

Mode of communication:

Answer 16

The means by which these messages are transmitted and received.

Question 17

Semanticity:

Answer 17

The property requiring that all signals in a communication system have a meaning or a function

Question 18

Pragmatic function:

Answer 18

Serve some useful purpose.

Question 19

Interchangeability:

Answer 19

The ability of individuals to both transmit and receive messages.

Question 20

Cultural transmission:

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Arbitrariness:

Answer 21

(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.

Question 22

Linguistic sign:

Answer 22

The combination of a linguistic form and meaning

Question 23

Convention:

Answer 23

Tells you that a certain group of sounds goes with a particular meaning.

Question 24

Nonarbitrariness:

Answer 24

Where the form represents the meaning directly, are said to be iconic (or picture-like)

Question 25

Iconic:

Answer 25

Picture-like. Relationship between form and meaning such that the form of a word bears a resemblance to its meaning.

Question 26

Onomatopoeia:

Answer 26

Words that are imitative of natural sounds or have meanings that are associated with such sounds of nature.

Question 27

Conventionalized:

Answer 27

Something that is established, commonly agreed upon, or operating in 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 the meaning.

Question 28

Sound symbolism:

Answer 28

Certain sounds occur in words not by virtue of being directly imitative of some sound but rather simply by being evocative (bringing strong images, memories or feelings to mind)

Question 29

Discreteness:

Answer 29

The property of language (among other communication systems) that allows us to combine together discrete units in order to create larger communication units. The only requirement is that there must be recombinable units however it would be possible for there to be s fixed set of ways in which these units could combine.

Question 30

Displacement:

Answer 30

The ability of a language to communicate about things, actions, and ideas that are not present in space or time while speakers are communicating.

Question 31

Productivity:

Answer 31

No fixed or set ways in which units can combine. A language’s capacity for novel messages to be built up out of discrete units.

Question 32

Modality:

Answer 32

Mode of communication. Tells us two things: how it is produced and how it is perceived.

Question 33

Myths about signed languages

Answer 33

There is a myth that signed language derive from spoken languages, rather than being languages in their own right.
According to this myth one would expect that deaf signers in America would have a signed language that was structurally identical to English while signers in japan would have a signed language that was structurally similar to Japanese and so on.
This myth suggests that signed languages are merely codes for the language spoken in the surrounding area.
Signed languages are learned natively by both hearing and deaf people all over the world.
A strong piece of evidence that sign languages do not derive from the surrounding spoken language is that British and American Sign Language are unrelated.

Question 34

Differences between codes and languages

Answer 34

A code is an artificially constructed system for representing a natural language; it has no structure of its own but instead borrows its structure from the natural language that it represents. (Morse code)
Signed languages evolve naturally and independently of spoken languages.
Codes never have native speakers because they are artificial systems.
Language has native speakers.
Manual codes for spoken language do not exist.
Manual codes do not share many properties of language that linguists study.