W2: the structure of language

Question 1

What is a phoneme?

Answer 1

The smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish meaning

p in “tap,” separates it from “tab,” “tag,” and “tan.

Question 2

What is a minimal pair?

Answer 2

A pair of words that only differ by one sound, they have different meanings because of this
E.g. pin/bin, cot/got, sue/zoo

Question 3

What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?

Answer 3

Phonetics: focus on physical properties of sounds and how they are produced

Phonology: focus on the category that a sound fits in that language

E.g. the ‘c’ in can and scan is physically different

• phonetics would say that they sound different and are said differently so they are different phones (aspirated vs. unaspirated)
• phonology would say it doesnt make any difference to their meaning in english, they are the same phoneme

Question 4

How do we make sounds?

Answer 4

By expelling air from our lungs through vocal tract

Question 5

The air expelled from our lungs when making sounds can be…

Answer 5

Undifferentiated
Constrained
Restricted
Stopped

Question 6

When air from lungs is unobstructed what do we get?

Answer 6

Undifferentiated noise

Question 7

When air from lungs is obstructed what do we get?

Answer 7

Particular sounds e.g. consonants and vowels

Question 8

What makes a consonant sound?

Answer 8

Sound that is stopped or restricted

Question 9

What makes a vowel sound?

Answer 9

Sound that is constrained

Question 10

What is the international phonetic alphabet (IPA)?

Answer 10

It is the worldwide standard for representing sounds unambiguously as letters do not consistently represent certain sounds

Question 11

What are syllables?

Answer 11

Rhythmic units words can be divided into

Question 12

What are the categories of number of syllables in words?

Answer 12

Monosyllabic - 1
Bisyllabic -2
Polysyllabic - many

Question 13

What are morphemes?

Answer 13

Smallest meaningful parts of words
E.g. trees - tree + s =2
rewriting - re + write + ing = 3

Question 14

What are the two different kinds of morphemes?

Answer 14

Morphemes can be free or bound

Question 15

What are free morphemes?

Answer 15

They can stand alone

Tree, write, help

Question 16

What are bound morphemes?

Answer 16

They add meaning but cannot stand alone

un, re, s, ing, ful

Question 17

Explain the wug test

Answer 17

Classic test of morphological knowledge in children
‘This is a wug. Now there is another one. There is two of them. There are 2 ….’

Children as young as 4 years can consistently produce the right answer - this means that even children under the age of 4 have this rule as it is not a familiar word (know that ‘s’ is a plural ending)

Question 18

What are inflectional morphemes? and what do each of the variations mean?

Answer 18

They are bound morphemes that can provide information about a word and its grammatical function

e.g. plural =s 
possessive = 's or s'
past tense = ed
present continuous verb = ing 
comparative = er
superlative (absoloute most) = est

Question 19

What are derivational morphemes?

Answer 19

They are bound morphemes that can create new meaning un + happy = unhappy

They allow us to create thousands of words

Question 20

What is syntax?

Answer 20

The study of word order and of rules for how words can be combined

Question 21

Syntax can be considered to be…

Answer 21

A skeletal frame, with slots for words

As well as a tool to help to determine whether a sentence is grammatical and logical

Question 22

Explain SOV in terms of sentence structure

Answer 22

SUBJECT - OBJECT - VERB

Sentence structure - word order shows us who did what to whom (grammatical relations)

Subject: thing that is doing something
Object: the thing that is having something done - object of what is happening in the sentence
Verb: the doing word - that tells us what is happening

Question 23

Languages that have freer word order rely on what to show grammatical relations?

Answer 23

Affixes

Question 24

What are semantics?

Answer 24

The study of the literal meaning

Also examines the relationships between words of connected meaning

Question 25

Why can words and their meanings be dissociated? (3)

Answer 25

The translation of words between languages isn’t perfect - not every language will have words that map perfectly to English

Ambiguity and synonymy: some words may have more than one meaning or may share a meaning with another word

Influence of context: the surrounding context may influence the interpretation of some words

Question 26

What are synonyms? Are they common in English?

Answer 26

Are words that mean exactly the same as another word -

True synonyms are rare but near-synonyms are common

Question 27

What are antonyms? and what are the different types?

Answer 27

Words with meanings opposite to each other

May be mutually exclusive pairs - push/pull where it is one or the other 
Or gradable (deep/shallow, big/little)

Question 28

What is homophony?

Answer 28

When words sound the same, may be spelled the same but they have different meanings (tap(water)/tap(knock)

Question 29

What are heterographic homophones?

Answer 29

Words that sound the same
BUT
Different meaning and spelling
E.g. pie and pi

Question 30

What is homography?

Answer 30

Words that are spelt the same that have different meanings (gum/gum)

May also be pronounced differently (tear/tear)

Question 31

What are polysemy words?

Answer 31

Means there are multiple meanings for the same word (same spelling, same sound)

When you hear the word, certain meanings may be activated more than others

E.g. Bank (river)/bank (finances)

Question 32

What are pragmatics?

Answer 32

Actual/literal meaning

How language is used to accomplish goals such as informing, promising and requesting (speaker meaning)

Question 33

What is register?

Answer 33

The fashion in which we choose to speak to suit our audience

Question 34

What is a concept?

Answer 34

A mental representation of a category

Question 35

What influences the categorisation of a word?

Answer 35

Perceived structure of the world (categorising sheep with cats and dogs because similar properties such as on 4 legs)

Cognitive economy (way easier to have animal category and put all animals into it so we don’t need to store heaps of information multiple times)

Question 36

Explain hierarchical relationships

Answer 36

Have a basic level
E.g. potato

As well as a superordinate level - what the basic level belongs to
E.g. Food, vegetable, import

And a subordinate level that the basic level can be divided into
E.g. Kennebec, Pinkeye, Dutch cream

Question 37

What are associative networks?

Answer 37

Word meaning = sum of all associations to a word

• No structure
• No relations between words
• No hierarchy of information
• No cognitive economy

Not sufficiently powerful enough to capture meaning

Question 38

What are semantic networks?

Answer 38

A semantic network is a cognitively based graphic representation of knowledge that demonstrates the relationships between various concepts within a network. A hierarchy may order the organization of a semantic network’s nodes.

Question 39

What are the criticisms of the semantic network model?

Answer 39

May be too hiearchical (some things are not hiearchical)

Is it how many nodes apart things are or how frequently they occur together (Robin and bird occur together a lot but penguin and bird dont as often)

Question 40

Labial consonant sounds are made from?

Answer 40

The lips

p, b, w and m

Question 41

Where are labiodental consonant sounds made?

Answer 41

With the lips and teeth

F and V

Question 42

Where are dental consonant sounds made?

Answer 42

Between the teeth

Th

Question 43

Where are alveolar consonant sounds made?

Answer 43

At the alveolar ridge

T, d, s, z, n, r and l

Question 44

Where are post-alveolar consonant sounds made?

Answer 44

At the alveolar ridge and palate

sh, zh, ch, j and y

Question 45

Where are velar consonant sounds made?

Answer 45

At the velum

k, g, ng

Question 46

Where are glottal consonant sounds made?

Answer 46

At the glottis

h and uh