W1: key concepts and foundations of language Flashcards
What is communication?
The transmission of information from one source to another
What is language?
A system of symbols that convey meaning because of shared rules
Not all communicative acts constitute…
Language
Communication is a much broader theme and language is just a part of it
What is the focus of linguistics?
The structure of language
Linguistics is ……. rather than ……
Descriptive rather than prescriptive (involves really looking at language and describing it - it is not telling people what to do)
What do linguists try to do?
Try to describe language
Try to account for what people say and find acceptable
What is the focus of psycholinguistics?
The psychological processes by which people acquire and use language (either as children learning to speak or an adult learning a new language)
What do neurolinguistics focus on?
How language is represented in the brain and what happens if something goes wrong (e.g. head injury)
What are the ultimate goals of everyone involved in studying language? And why have we not attained these goals yet?
To develop an integrated account of how language users produce and understand language AND how children develop these abilities so rapidly
We haven’t reached this goal because language is so complex and research techniques are sometimes inadequate
What are phonemes?
They are the smallest units of sound
What are phonetics?
Speech sounds and how they are articulated
What are phonotactics?
The rules for combining sounds within a language
- They are not taught but we all know them
What is prosody?
Patterns of intonation and stress (contours of a sentence)
- they can help to explain exactly what you mean
What are morphemes?
They are the smallest units of meaning
What is morphology?
The study of how words are built up from morphemes
What are free morphemes?
They can stand alone and make sense
green + house
thumb + print
What are bound morphemes?
They cannot stand alone like free morphemes, but they still add meaning
noodle + s
walk + ing
What are semantics?
The literal meaning of words
Word meanings are stored in our…
Mental lexicon
Content words vs. function words?
Content words hold meaning
Function words help the sentence along
What is syntax?
Rules for combining words into sentences
What are pragmatics?
What you really mean..
Word choice/interpretation according to the situation
Guides the choice of language in context such as being polite
‘It’s a bit chilly in here vs. close the door’
What is a language register?
The appropriate level of written or spoken language for a given situation
What is discourse?
Verbal or written interaction longer than a single utterance
What is discourse success?
Hearer/readers full interpretation of speaker/writer’s intent
What is metalinguistic awareness?
The ability to think about language - we can all speak/understand English but may not always understand why certain things sound right/wrong/different
Languages change over time. What kinds of changes may occur?
Loss of old words
Inclusion of new words
Borrowing words from other languages (algebra, chai, pasta)
Giving new meanings to old words (cool, sick)
Inventing new words (hangry, zoodle)
What are the modalities of language?
Spoken language
Written language
Signed language
Which of Hockett’s design features seem to be unique to humans? (4)
- Arbitrariness: neutral symbols that don’t resemble what they stand for
- Displacement: the system can refer to things remote in time and space
- Reflectiveness: we can communicate about the communication system itself
- Openness/creativity/productivity: the ability to invent new messages (putting words together in new ways)
Animal communication is dependent on..
Context and/or stimulus
A reason to communicate that is external to them
Whereas, humans will talk for the sake of it
The vocalisations of animals occur under what conditions?
Narrowly specified conditions whereas humans will vocalise under any condition
Explain the language of vervet monkeys?
They can produce 36 distinct vocal sounds - the choice of sound is generally determined by circumstances such as being lost of different types of danger
No creativity - don’t use sounds in creative or new ways
Explain language used by birds
Birds typically give off an alarm cry when they see a predator (not telling of specific predators like monkeys do as they have a more limited vocal tract)
This cry may continue after a predator is gone
Is this displacement or continued fear??
Alex the African grey parrot?
Knew about 80 words - could understand and produce short word sequences
Knew few verbs or function words and couldnt relate objects to verbs
Dolphins Phoenix and Akeakamai?
They learnt visual cues to language but their syntactic abilities were very limites
No attempt to produce language
Attempts to teach language to apes?
More successful than other animals
Early research: tried to teach human speech to apes reared as/with human children. This was mostly met with failure due to physiological differences in articulary apparatus
Instead of teaching human speech to apes, what else can be taught?
- Sign language
- Button-pressing
- Token manipulation
All more ape friendly
Explain the abilities of Washoe the female chimp
She was taught to use modified sign language with constant human tutoring
Learnt 150-200 signs in 6 years (takes a human 6 months for the same learning)
Showed semanticity, limited displacement, apparent creativity but no fixed word order
Explain the abilities of Sarah the female chimp
She lived in a cage and had a strict regime - taught to manipulate plastic tokens
Each token symbolised a word (red square = banana)
she understood >100 symbols
Clear semanticity
No creativity or conversation
Explain the abilities of the bonobo names Kanzi
Learned incidentally
Produced some well-ordered, meaningful combinations
Understood novel situations as well as a 3 year old child
90% of his utterances were requests (when humans use language we use it to share information but he used it to get what he wanted)
Best case of language-like abilities in apes
At best, animals can learn a..
Protolanguage
