W2: the structure of language Flashcards by Alicia Lowe

What is a phoneme?

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

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

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What is a minimal pair?

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

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What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?

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

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How do we make sounds?

By expelling air from our lungs through vocal tract

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

Undifferentiated
Constrained
Restricted
Stopped

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When air from lungs is unobstructed what do we get?

Undifferentiated noise

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When air from lungs is obstructed what do we get?

Particular sounds e.g. consonants and vowels

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What makes a consonant sound?

Sound that is stopped or restricted

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What makes a vowel sound?

Sound that is constrained

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What is the international phonetic alphabet (IPA)?

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

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What are syllables?

Rhythmic units words can be divided into

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What are the categories of number of syllables in words?

Monosyllabic - 1
Bisyllabic -2
Polysyllabic - many

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What are morphemes?

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

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What are the two different kinds of morphemes?

Morphemes can be free or bound

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What are free morphemes?

They can stand alone

Tree, write, help

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What are bound morphemes?

They add meaning but cannot stand alone

un, re, s, ing, ful

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Explain the wug test

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)

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

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

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What are derivational morphemes?

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

They allow us to create thousands of words

What is syntax?

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

Syntax can be considered to be…

A skeletal frame, with slots for words

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

Explain SOV in terms of sentence structure

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

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

Affixes

What are semantics?

The study of the literal meaning

Also examines the relationships between words of connected meaning

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

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

What are synonyms? Are they common in English?

Are words that mean exactly the same as another word - | True synonyms are rare but near-synonyms are common

What are antonyms? and what are the different types?

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) ```

What is homophony?

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

What are heterographic homophones?

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

What is homography?

Words that are spelt the same that have different meanings (gum/gum) May also be pronounced differently (tear/tear)

What are polysemy words?

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)

What are pragmatics?

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

What is register?

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

What is a concept?

A mental representation of a category

What influences the categorisation of a word?

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)

Explain hierarchical relationships

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

What are associative networks?

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

What are semantic networks?

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.

What are the criticisms of the semantic network model?

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)

Labial consonant sounds are made from?

The lips | p, b, w and m

Where are labiodental consonant sounds made?

With the lips and teeth | F and V

Where are dental consonant sounds made?

Between the teeth | Th

Where are alveolar consonant sounds made?

At the alveolar ridge | T, d, s, z, n, r and l

Where are post-alveolar consonant sounds made?

At the alveolar ridge and palate | sh, zh, ch, j and y

Where are velar consonant sounds made?

At the velum | k, g, ng

Where are glottal consonant sounds made?

At the glottis | h and uh