week 12: language part 1: linguistics Flashcards
what is communication
behaviours used by one member of a species that convey information to another
examples of communication
turn taking intonation
gesture (body language)
eye gaze control
touch
what is language
a communication system that has symbols (eg. words) and rules for ways to assemble the symbols (eg. grammar)
what does language make possible
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)
what is linguistics
the study of language structure, variation and change
what is psycholinguistics
the psychology of our language as it interacts with the human mind
what does linguistics look at
phonology
morphology
syntax
semantics
pragmatics
what does psycholinguistics look at
perception (speech, reading)
production (speaking, writing, signing)
what is grammar
refers to the system of language consisting of phonology, morphology and syntax
when did we start studying the psychology of language
mid 18th century
what are words
a pairing between a sound and a meaning
what did ferdinand de Saussure propose regarding words
that the pairing between a sound and a meaning was arbitrary as different languages use different sounds to convey the same meaning
what has more recent studies of words discovered
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
what is iconicity
resemblance between form and meaning of words
examples of iconicity
teeny: conveys a sense of smallness through the high-front vowel /i/
bouba-kiki effect: round and sharp shapes, respectively
what is systematicity
any stat regularity between phonological structure and meaning
example of systematicity
phonesthemes
an example of phonesthemes
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
2 ways to represent sound patterns in speech
phonemes
phonetics
what are phonemes
smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another
what are allophones
different representations of the same phoneme
eg. lips, spill, slip, lisp are the sound sounds in different orders
what are phonetics
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’
how may phonemes be represented
by different letters eg. phoneme /k/: cat, kit, school
what does tune and rhythm of speech convey
meaning eg. attitude, emotion, sarcasm etc
what is prosody
the tune and rhythm of speech
at the phonetic level, prosody is characterised by:
vocal pitch (fundamental frequency)
loudness (acoustic intensity)
rhythm (phoneme and syllable duration)
what are morphology
word structure and formation
what are morphemes
the smallest unit of meaning within a language
types of morphemes
free morpheme
bound morpheme
what is a free morpheme
it can stand alone as a single word
eg. cat
types of bound morphemes
derivational morphemes
inflectional morphemes
what are derivational morphemes
prefixes and suffixes
eg. re-charge-able
what are inflectional morphemes
suffixes
eg. plural -s and regular past tense -ed
where do people store their native language morphemes
in a mental lexicon
high school graduates vocabulary
45,000-60,000 words
what are syntax
the system of rules specifying how words are combined in sentences
what do syntax have the capacity for
infinite expression
what is the word order for the english language
subject-verb-object
eg. the boy/ throws/ a ball
example of syntactically correct but meaningless sentence
colourless green ideas sleep furiously
when is a sentence syntactically ambiguous
when the string of words can plausibly be assigned more than one syntactic structure
when can structural ambiguity happen (syntax)
with a missplaced modifier, often used intentionally to create a joke
what do you need to be mindful of with misplaced modifier
to make sure that modifiers are as close to the word that they modify as possible
what are semantics
how word and sentence level meanings are expressed in languages
what are semantics influenced by
morphology
syntax
phonology
what is monosemy
a word form that has only one meaning or sense
eg. lucrative
types of lexical ambiguity
homonym
polysemy
homophone
what is a homonym semantic
associated with 2 or more unrelated senses
eg. coach means either bus or sports instructor
what is polysemy semantics
refers to a single word form being associated with 2 or several related senses
eg. mouth of the river
what is a homophone semantic
a word that is pronounced similarly to another word but differs in meaning
eg. flower and flour
what is pragmatics in linguistics
how context and other information contribute to meaning
how does sign language differ from spoken language
tends to be less strict in word order/syntax
is more iconic
