week 12: language part 1: linguistics

Question 1

what is communication

Answer 1

behaviours used by one member of a species that convey information to another

Question 2

examples of communication

Answer 2

turn taking intonation
gesture (body language)
eye gaze control
touch

Question 3

what is language

Answer 3

a communication system that has symbols (eg. words) and rules for ways to assemble the symbols (eg. grammar)

Question 4

what does language make possible

Answer 4

to think about things and processes we currently cannot see, hear, feel, touch, or smell as well as intangible ideas (goodwill, freedom, truth, virtue etc)

Question 5

what is linguistics

Answer 5

the study of language structure, variation and change

Question 6

what is psycholinguistics

Answer 6

the psychology of our language as it interacts with the human mind

Question 7

what does linguistics look at

Answer 7

phonology
morphology
syntax
semantics
pragmatics

Question 8

what does psycholinguistics look at

Answer 8

perception (speech, reading)
production (speaking, writing, signing)

Question 9

what is grammar

Answer 9

refers to the system of language consisting of phonology, morphology and syntax

Question 10

when did we start studying the psychology of language

Answer 10

mid 18th century

Question 11

what are words

Answer 11

a pairing between a sound and a meaning

Question 12

what did ferdinand de Saussure propose regarding words

Answer 12

that the pairing between a sound and a meaning was arbitrary as different languages use different sounds to convey the same meaning

Question 13

what has more recent studies of words discovered

Answer 13

an analyses across languages have shown sound-to-meanings are more systematic than would be expected by chance, especially for words acquired early in life

Question 14

what is iconicity

Answer 14

resemblance between form and meaning of words

Question 15

examples of iconicity

Answer 15

teeny: conveys a sense of smallness through the high-front vowel /i/
bouba-kiki effect: round and sharp shapes, respectively

Question 16

what is systematicity

Answer 16

any stat regularity between phonological structure and meaning

Question 17

example of systematicity

Answer 17

phonesthemes

Question 18

an example of phonesthemes

Answer 18

in english, gl- frequently occurs in words referring to shiny visual phenomena eg. glitter, glimmer, glisten, glitz, but there is no clear perceptual connection between gl and shiny visual phenomena

Question 19

2 ways to represent sound patterns in speech

Answer 19

phonemes
phonetics

Question 20

what are phonemes

Answer 20

smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another

Question 21

what are allophones

Answer 21

different representations of the same phoneme
eg. lips, spill, slip, lisp are the sound sounds in different orders

Question 22

what are phonetics

Answer 22

the physical properties of speech sounds and how they are produced and perceived in different contexts
eg. the different between english and french pronunciation of ‘cave’

Question 23

how may phonemes be represented

Answer 23

by different letters eg. phoneme /k/: cat, kit, school

Question 24

what does tune and rhythm of speech convey

Answer 24

meaning eg. attitude, emotion, sarcasm etc

Question 25

what is prosody

Answer 25

the tune and rhythm of speech

Question 26

at the phonetic level, prosody is characterised by:

Answer 26

vocal pitch (fundamental frequency) loudness (acoustic intensity) rhythm (phoneme and syllable duration)

Question 27

what are morphology

Answer 27

word structure and formation

Question 28

what are morphemes

Answer 28

the smallest unit of meaning within a language

Question 29

types of morphemes

Answer 29

free morpheme bound morpheme

Question 30

what is a free morpheme

Answer 30

it can stand alone as a single word eg. cat

Question 31

types of bound morphemes

Answer 31

derivational morphemes inflectional morphemes

Question 32

what are derivational morphemes

Answer 32

prefixes and suffixes eg. re-charge-able

Question 33

what are inflectional morphemes

Answer 33

suffixes eg. plural -s and regular past tense -ed

Question 34

where do people store their native language morphemes

Answer 34

in a mental lexicon

Question 35

high school graduates vocabulary

Answer 35

45,000-60,000 words

Question 36

what are syntax

Answer 36

the system of rules specifying how words are combined in sentences

Question 37

what do syntax have the capacity for

Answer 37

infinite expression

Question 38

what is the word order for the english language

Answer 38

subject-verb-object eg. the boy/ throws/ a ball

Question 39

example of syntactically correct but meaningless sentence

Answer 39

colourless green ideas sleep furiously

Question 40

when is a sentence syntactically ambiguous

Answer 40

when the string of words can plausibly be assigned more than one syntactic structure

Question 41

when can structural ambiguity happen (syntax)

Answer 41

with a missplaced modifier, often used intentionally to create a joke

Question 42

what do you need to be mindful of with misplaced modifier

Answer 42

to make sure that modifiers are as close to the word that they modify as possible

Question 43

what are semantics

Answer 43

how word and sentence level meanings are expressed in languages

Question 44

what are semantics influenced by

Answer 44

morphology syntax phonology

Question 45

what is monosemy

Answer 45

a word form that has only one meaning or sense eg. lucrative

Question 46

types of lexical ambiguity

Answer 46

homonym polysemy homophone

Question 47

what is a homonym semantic

Answer 47

associated with 2 or more unrelated senses eg. coach means either bus or sports instructor

Question 48

what is polysemy semantics

Answer 48

refers to a single word form being associated with 2 or several related senses eg. mouth of the river

Question 49

what is a homophone semantic

Answer 49

a word that is pronounced similarly to another word but differs in meaning eg. flower and flour

Question 50

what is pragmatics in linguistics

Answer 50

how context and other information contribute to meaning

Question 51

how does sign language differ from spoken language

Answer 51

tends to be less strict in word order/syntax is more iconic