Yule Bold Terms

Question 1

Glossolalia

Answer 1

Individuals speaking in tongues, producing speech-like sounds that lack a logical meaning, often in a religious context.

Question 2

Reflexivity

Answer 2

Reflexive words show that the person who does the action is also the person who is affected by it.

Question 3

Displacement

Answer 3

The capability of language to communicate about things that are not immediately present.

Question 4

Arbitrariness

Answer 4

The principle that there is no inherent connection between linguistic signs (words) and their meanings; the relationship is largely conventional.

Question 5

Cultural transmission

Answer 5

Language is learned and passed down through social interaction within a culture, rather than inherited genetically.

Question 6

Fixed reference

Answer 6

The characteristic of animal communication systems where specific signals correspond to particular meanings or contexts, without flexibility.

All animal signals have a feature called fixed reference that means each signal is fixed as relating to a particular object or occasion

Question 7

Onomatopoeia

Answer 7

Words that phonetically imitate or resemble the sound they describe (e.g., “buzz,” “bang”).

Question 8

Acoustic phonetics

Answer 8

The study of the physical properties of speech sounds as they travel through the air.

Question 9

Articulatory phonetics

Answer 9

The study of how speech sounds are produced by the movement of the articulators (e.g., tongue, lips).

Question 10

Vocal folds

Answer 10

The pair of muscle-controlled folds in the larynx that vibrate to produce sound during phonation.

Question 11

Voiced and voiceless sounds

Answer 11

Voiced sounds are produced with vocal fold vibration (e.g., “b”), while voiceless sounds are produced without such vibration (e.g., “p”).

Question 12

Auditory phonetics

Answer 12

The study of how speech sounds are perceived by the ear and processed by the brain.

Question 13

Dentals and interdentals

Answer 13

Dentals are sounds produced with the tongue against the upper teeth (e.g., “t,” “d”), while interdentals are produced with the tongue between the teeth (e.g., “th” in “think”).

Question 14

Post-alveolars

Answer 14

Speech sounds produced with the tongue just behind the alveolar ridge (e.g., “sh,” “zh” - [ʒ].

Question 15

Flap

Answer 15

A quick, light contact of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, producing a sound like the American English “t” or “d” in “water” or “butter.”

Question 16

Natural class of phonemes

Answer 16

A group of phonemes that share one or more phonetic features (e.g., voiceless stops: /p/, /t/, /k/).

Question 17

Neologism

Answer 17

A newly coined word or expression that may not yet be widely accepted or recognised.

Question 18

Etymology

Answer 18

The study of the origin and historical development of words and their meanings.

Question 19

Loan-translation / calque

Answer 19

A type of borrowing in which a foreign expression is translated directly into the target language (e.g., “skyscraper” from the French “gratte-ciel”).

Question 20

Blending

Answer 20

The creation of a new word by combining parts of two existing words (e.g., “brunch” from “breakfast” and “lunch”).

Question 21

Hypocorism

Answer 21

A term of endearment or affectionate nickname (e.g., “Billy” for “William”).

Question 22

Backformation

Answer 22

The creation of a new word by removing an affix from an existing word (e.g., “edit” from “editor”).

Question 23

Conversion

Answer 23

The process of changing a word’s grammatical category without altering its form (e.g., using “run” as a noun or a verb).

Question 24

Coining

Answer 24

The act of inventing a new word or phrase.

Question 25

Eponyms

Answer 25

Words derived from the names of people or places (e.g., “sandwich” from the Earl of Sandwich).

Question 26

Analogy

Answer 26

A process by which words or forms are created or altered based on the patterns of other words (e.g., forming “runned” based on “ran” and “runned”).

Question 27

Morphemes

Answer 27

The smallest units of meaning in a language, which can be words or parts of words.

Question 28

Free and bound morphemes

Answer 28

Free morphemes can stand alone as words (e.g., “book”), while bound morphemes must attach to other morphemes (e.g., “un-“ in “unhappy”).

Question 29

Functional morphemes

Answer 29

Morphemes that serve a grammatical purpose rather than carrying substantial meaning (e.g., “and,” “but,” “the”).

Question 30

Derivational morphemes

Answer 30

Morphemes added to a base word to create a new word with a different meaning or category (e.g., “happy” to “unhappy”).

Question 31

Inflectional morphemes

Answer 31

Morphemes that modify a word to express grammatical features such as tense, mood, or number (e.g., “cat” to “cats”).

Question 32

Allomorphs

Answer 32

Variations of a morpheme that occur in different contexts but have the same meaning (e.g., plural “s” in “cats” vs. “es” in “buses”).

Question 33

Reduplication

Answer 33

The process of repeating all or part of a word to create a new meaning or grammatical form (e.g., “bye-bye”).

Question 34

Content morphemes

Answer 34

Words that have a clear semantic meaning (like book, luck, un-, –y, boy) .