Week 1 + 2

Question 1

what is speech?

Answer 1

production of sounds for communicating ideas

Question 2

what is communication?

Answer 2

sharing, imparting or recieving information

Question 3

what is descriptive grammar?

Answer 3

how language is actually used and rules speakers actually follow

Question 4

what is prescriptive grammar?

Answer 4

how language “should” be, standardized/prestige

Question 5

what is phonetics?

Answer 5

how basic units of sounds are produced and perceived (spoken - sound waves, or signed - sign)

Question 6

what is phonology?

Answer 6

how sounds are categorized and combined in a system

Question 7

what is morphology?

Answer 7

how words are made of smaller pieces of information

Question 8

what is syntax?

Answer 8

how words are put together in sentences

Question 9

what is semantics?

Answer 9

how words and sentences are translated into meaning

Question 10

what is pragmatics?

Answer 10

how context influences meaning

Question 11

what is a morpheme?

Answer 11

smallest linguistic unit with meaning or grammatical function (ex: cat, -s)

Question 12

what is an allomorph?

Answer 12

morphemes that sound different but fulfill the same function (ex: -s, -en for plurals)

Question 13

what are the two morphological types of languages?

Answer 13

analytic or synthetic

Question 14

what is an analytic language?

Answer 14

most words have only one morpheme, very few affixes (ex: Chinese)

Question 15

what is a synthetic language? what are the three types?

Answer 15

words frequently contain more than one morpheme, affixes are frequent - agglutinating, fusional, polysynthetic

Question 16

what is an agglutinating language?

Answer 16

affixes are added to the stem, they affixes and stems don’t change when they come together, each affix tends to only have ONE meaning

Question 17

what is a fusional language?

Answer 17

affixes are added to the stem, the stem and affix often get fused together (change form when together), an affix can have more than one meaning

Question 18

what is a polysynthetic language?

Answer 18

many stems and affixes are put together into a single word, nouns can become part of a verb (noun incorporation), very long words

Question 19

what is a stop/plosive?

Answer 19

complete occlusion of the airstream through the oral cavity

Question 20

what is a fricative?

Answer 20

near-complete occlusion of the vocal tract resulting in frication: turbulent, hissing airflow

Question 21

what is an affricate?

Answer 21

begins with the occlusion of airflow, followed by frication (ex: [t͡ʃ])

Question 22

what is a nasal stop?

Answer 22

airflow through the nasal cavity while oral cavity is fully occluded

Question 23

what is a tap or flap?

Answer 23

contact between an active and passive articulator that is short in duration, no buildup of pressure

Question 24

what is an approximant?

Answer 24

the active articulator approaches the passive articulator but doesn’t occlude airflow enough to cause frication - liquids and glides

Question 25

what is a liquid?

Answer 25

consonant sound produced when the tongue partially closes the mouth (ex: [l] or [ɹ]

Question 26

what are glides or semivowels?

Answer 26

vowel-like sounds with slightly more closure of the articulators (ex: [j] or [w])

Question 27

what are the 4 features of vowels?

Answer 27

height, front/backness, roundness, tense/lex

Question 28

what are natural classes?

Answer 28

everything of that category and nothing not of that category

Question 29

what is lenition?

Answer 29

Weakening of a sound (stops > affricates > fricatives > nasals > liquids > glides > vowels)

Question 30

what is fortition?

Answer 30

Strengthening of a sound (vowels > glides > liquids > nasals > fricatives > affricates > stops)

Question 31

what is the type of lenition known as rhotacism?

Answer 31

The lenition of [s] or [z] to a rhotic between vowels

Question 32

what is apheresis?

Answer 32

The loss of initial sound segments

Question 33

what is apocope?

Answer 33

The loss of sounds at the end of a word

Question 34

what is syncope?

Answer 34

Loss of sound segments in the middle of a word

Question 35

what is haplology?

Answer 35

Losing an entire syllable when it is near the same or a similar syllable

Question 36

what is cluster reduction?

Answer 36

Deleting 1+ of the consonants in a word

Question 37

what is excrescence?

Answer 37

Adding a consonant between two consonants

Question 38

what is epenthesis?

Answer 38

Adding a vowel in the middle of a word to break up a consonant cluster

Question 39

what is prothesis?

Answer 39

Adding a sound at the beginning of a word

Question 40

what is metathesis?

Answer 40

Changing the order of sounds in the word

Question 41

what is fusion?

Answer 41

Two separate sounds fuse into one with features of both original sounds

Question 42

what is compensatory lengthening?

Answer 42

The vowel lengthens to compensate for the loss of a consonant

Question 43

what is fission?

Answer 43

A single sound becomes two sounds each with features of the original sound

Question 44

what is vowel breaking?

Answer 44

A monophthong becomes a diphthong with the original vowel (first or last) and a glide

Question 45

what is assimilation?

Answer 45

Sound neighbors cause a sound to become more like them

Question 46

what is progressive assimilation?

Answer 46

Features of the following sound are changed to match those of the proceeding sound

Question 47

what is regressive assimilation?

Answer 47

Features of the preceding sound are changed by the following sound (more common)

Question 48

what is vowel harmony?

Answer 48

assimilation of one or more features of one vowel to some or all of the other vowels in the same word

Question 49

what is dissimilation?

Answer 49

A sound changes to be less like a nearby sound

Question 50

What is palatalization?

Answer 50

A nonpalatal sound becomes more palatial usually before a front vowel (fronting)

Question 51

What is final devoicing?

Answer 51

Sounds at the end of the word, especially stops and fricatives, change from voiced to voiceless

Question 52

What is Grassmann’s Law?

Answer 52

Famous example of dissimilation: in Greek and Sanskrit, when two syllables followed each other and both contain aspirated stops, the first of these lost its aspiration and became unaspirated