LEL1B All Topics

Flashcards covering all of LEL1B - Phonology, Sociolinguistics, Historical Phonology/Morphology, Syntax, Semantics/Pragmatics, and Sign Language

Variable

An abstract concept defined by having two or more ways of saying the same thing, e.g. English /t/

Variant

Each individual way of saying something, e.g. English [t], [tʰ], [ʔ], [d], etc. are variants of the /t/ variable

Negative concord

AKA a double negative, like “I ain’t got none”

Constraints on variation

Categorical rules which reliably predict when and where a particular sound will or will not occur

Free variation

AKA sociolinguistic variation, where the sound produced by a speaker is determined based on probability determined by linguistic and social factors

Style

Another word for context; the type of speech based on the situation

Community of Practice

A group of people in a community who know each other and are brought together by work or school

Interspeaker variation

Variation between (groups of) people

Intraspeaker variation

Variation in an individual’s speech based on context

Operationalisation

A data collection technique where a somewhat vague category (like social class) is quantified and stratified to perform stastical analysis

Prescriptivism

• A language ideology in which one variant is deemed 'correct' and the other variants 'incorrect'

• Often justified as being ‘common sense’

• Dictated by grammars, their writers, and other linguistic gatekeepers

Descriptivism

• The belief that language is not correct/incorrect, or better/worse, but is simply an entrenched cultural belief, based on the observation of how language is used

• Does not involve value judgements

• Interested in how language is, not how it ought to be

Standard variants

Variants that are legitimised and accepted

Non-standard variants

Variants that are not legitimised or accepted

Trudgill (1999: 118) definition of Standard English

It is the variety of English normally used in writing, especially printing; it is the variety associated with the education system […], and is therefore the variety spoken by those who are often referred to as "educated people"; and it is the variety taught to non-native learners

Written Standard English

Developed during the 15th Century and based on the East Midlands dialect

Standard Language Ideologies

Belief systems rooted in the idea that Standard Language improves employability, nation state identity, etc.

Language change

The gradual shifting of standard language over a period of time; a diachronic process

Trends of language change

• Variation is typically led by young people

• Innovative slang terms multiply over generations and become used in increasingly more formal contexts

• Typically stimulated mostly by women, ethnic minority groups, and upper-class working speakers

How change happens

• Subconscious changes in pronunciation or word use

• Interactions between different kinds of people based on region, social group, age group, etc

Intentional change

• Usually very rare for conscious changes to become widespread

• Examples include the extension of the use of they as a gender-neutral pronoun to refer to named referents who prefer gender neutral pronouns

Language mixing

• The creation of a pidgin or creole as a result of two languages interacting due to proximity

Superstrate

• The more socially dominant language involved in mixing

• Typically contributes the lexis

Substrate

• The less socially powerful langauge involved in mixing

• Typically contributes gramamtical structure

Sociolect

A way of speaking associated with a particular group of people based on their social background

Idiolect

The way that an individual speaks

Linguistic determinism

• AKA the ‘strong’ Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• The idea that language and its structure determines what we are capable of thinking and how we perceive reality

Linguistic relativity

• AKA the ‘weak’ (and more accurate) interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• The idea that language influences thought and how we perceive reality

• In other words, language change does not cause social change, and in fact some social change can stimulate language change

Distribution

A description of where given sounds are able to appear in the words of a language, restricted by phonotactic rules

Complementary distribution

Where two sounds never occur in the same context; their occurences are mutually exclusive

Parallel distribution

Where two sounds are able to occur in exactly the same contexts; they may lead to minimal pairs

Labial

A sound articulated with the lips, covering ‘labial’ and ‘labiodental’

Coronal

A sound articulated with the front part of the tongue, covering ‘dental’, ‘alveolar’, and ‘postalveolar’

Dorsal

A sound articulated with the mid-back part of the tongue, covering ‘velar’ and ‘uvular’

Obstruent

A sound with some form of closure in the vocal tract, covering stops, fricatives, and affricates

Sonorant

A sound without closure in the vocal tract, covering vowels, liquids, and glides

Minimal pairs

Where two words with different meanings differ by exactly one sound only, like [mɛt] and [nɛt]. The existence of these pairs proves that two phones are not allophones of the same phoneme

Contrastive

Where the difference between two sounds is enough to signal a difference in meaning

Phonemic level

The abstract level of mental grouping of sounds, notated using /slashes/

Allophonic level

The concrete level of phonetic realisation, notated using [square brackets]

Phonemes

The individual groupings of sounds at the phonemic/abstract level

Phones

The individual sounds realised at the allophonic level

Allophones

Phones which all correspond to the same phoneme, but which are used in different phonological environments

Classical allophony

Occurs when:

1. A phoneme’s allophones are in complementary distribution

2. The allophones are phonetically similar

Phones of different phonemes

1. Are in parallel distribution

2. Are semantically contrastive

Free variation

Where two allophones may be used unpredictably in the exact same phonological environments depending on the situation, such as word-medial /t/ being realised as either [t] or [ʔ] depending on the speaker and context

Aspiration

Where a consonant’s release is followed by a burst of air, notated with a superscript h (e.g. [tʰ])

Nasalisation

When the velum is lowered during articulation of a sound (often spoken about with vowels), notated with a tilde ~ (e.g. ã)

Dentalisation

When a consonant is articulated at the teeth, such as /n/ before /θ/ being realised as [n̪]

Syllable

A segment of a word that speakers have an intuitive feel for, notated sometimes as σ

Onset

The opening consonant sound of a syllable, which can be empty in English

Rhyme/rime

The second part of a syllable, containing a nucleus (mandatory) and a coda (optional)

Nucleus

The core part of the syllable’s rhyme, containing a sonorant phone (either a vowel or a nasal/approximant syllabic consonant like n̩)

Coda

The ending segment of a syllable, which can be empty in English

Closed syllable

A syllable with a coda

Open syllable

A syllable without a coda

Phonotactics

Language-specific restrictions on the environments of sounds in language

#

Word boundary when writing phonotactic rules

Maximal Onset Principle (MOP)

‘If a segment can be in an onset, it will be in an onset’ – in other words, consonants in a cluster will be part of an onset, not a coda (where permitted by phonotactics)

Constraints

Guidelines for where a sound cannot appear in a language

Free vowels

Vowels which can appear in both closed and open final syllables of words, like /u/ and /aɪ/

Checked vowels

Vowels which can only occur in closed final syllables, like /ɪ/ and /ɛ/

Systemic/systematic gaps

Hypothetical words which are forbidden in a language according to phonotactics

Accidental gaps

Hypothetical words which could exist in a language according to phonotactics, but which do not

Sonority

A property of sounds which correlates in some way to loudness or openness of the vocal tract

Sonority hierarchy

In order of sonority, from most to leastː

1. Vowels /iː, a, … /

2. Glides /w, j, … /

3. Approximants /r, l, … /

4. Nasals /m, n, … /

5. Fricatives /f, v, … /

6. Oral stops/plosives /p, b, … /

Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP)

A language-universal principle which states that sonority increases in a syllable towards the nucleus

Relatinship between MOP and SSP

The SSP will take priority over the MOP, meaning the syllabification of e.g. extract is [ˈek.ʃtrakt] and not [ˈe.kʃtrakt]

Stress

The pattern of emphasis in a word – a stressed syllable is typically longer and louder than others, as well as featuring movement in pitch

Primary stress

The most stressed syllable in a word, notated with [ˈ]

Secondary stress

A stressed syllable in a word, but which is not the site of primary stress – notated with [ˌ]

Free stress languages

Languages where stress is unpredictable and contrastive, e.g. Russian

Fixed stress languages

Languages with assigned stress patterns that are predictable, e.g. Turkish stress always falling on the final syllable

Heavy syllables

A syllable containing a long vowel, diphthong, or coda, which tends to attract the primary stress of a word

Light syllables

Syllables with a monophthong nucleus and no coda, which are less likely to be stressed

The Uniformitarian Principle

The principle stating that the way language works today is no different to how language worked in the past, and is no different to how it will work in the future

Runic inscriptions

The earliest form of English writing, used from about the 6th century

Timeline of English eras

Approximately:

• 8th to 11th Century: Old English

• 11th to 16th Century: Middle English

• 16th to 18th Century: Early Modern English

• 18th to 20th Century: Late Modern English

• 20th Century onwards: Present Day English (PDE)

Lenition

Articulatory change where the degree of stricture (level of closure in vocal tract) decreases, such as in the English phonological shift d > ð / V_Vr

Proto-language

A reconstruction of an earlier language based on written and existing evidence, like Proto-Germanic, which is based on changes across English, German, Dutch, Icelandic, etc.

Comparative method

A way of creating proto-languages based on analysing regular correspondences in cognates across related languages

Exceptionless hypothesis

Correspondences between languages as a result of regular phonological changes should be regular and without exception, apart from words borrowed after changes occurred

Diachronic

Contrasting language change between different periods of time

Synchronic

Contrasting language variation at a fixed point in time

Diphthongisation

The change of a vowel sound from a monophthong to a diphthong, like uː > aʊ from OE to PDE

Innovation

The alteration of a phonological segment or structure

Propogation

The way in which an innovation is taken up by speakers

Isogloss

A line marking dialect boundaries on a map

Speech community

A group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language

Language family

A group of related languages

Nominal case

A reconstructed inflectional case of PIE nouns which functions to indicate the subject

Syncretism

Where a single inflected form corresponds to multiple case functions

Gothic

Now-extinct East Germanic language regarded as the first Germanic language

Grimm’s Law

A systematic series of major consonant changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic

Grimm’s Law 1

PIE voiceless stops become PG voiceless fricatives (spirantisation), but not when following an obstruent

/p t k/ > /f θ x/

Grimm’s Law 2

PIE voiced stops become PG voiceless stops (devoicing)

/b d g/ > /p t k/

Grimm’s Law 3

PIE voiced aspirated stops become PG voiced unaspirated stops (deaspiration)

/bʰ dʰ gʰ/ > /b d g/

Verner’s Law

A sound change that occurred after Grimm’s Law 1 in which voiceless fricatives become voiced fricatives, but only when following unstressed syllables

/f θ x/ > /v ð ɣ/

Occlusion

Degree of closure in the vocal tract; a stop can also be called an occlusive

Assimilation

The phenomenon where a speech sound becomes more similar to a neighbouring sound