Studied by 26 people
ethnolinguistic approach
employs anthropological techniques of gathering data from observations of people's daily lives and of attempting to understand behavior from the participant's point of view
sociolinguistic approach
discovers problems of linguistic variation
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linguistic anthropology
the study of language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural reference
Phonology
the study of speech sounds in language
Phonetics
how you use your mouth and vocal system to create sounds
Phonemics
study of significant sound contrasts in a language to differentiate meaning
Morphology
structure of words and how words are formed
Morphemes
The smallest units of meaning in a language.
isolating language
A language which depends on word order rather than inflection to indicate grammatical relations
regular inflection
agglutinating
Syntax
The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language (most languages place the subject before the object)
Semantics
Meaning of words and sentences
agent
causes an action
patient
entity affected by an action
source
where the action originates
goal
where the action ends up
Kinesthetics
gesture, facial expression, eye contact, and body posture
Proxemics
touch and definitions of personal space
Miscommunications
when we think we know, not when we are aware we don't know
WSI
Warm Springs Indian
TCU
units that are grammatically and pragmatically complete
Turn constructional component
the elements that make a turn (words, phrase, sentence), and using context or tone as clues to start speaking
Turn allocation component
how the next speaker is chosen (either current speaker selects, the next speaker self-selects, or the current/last speaker keeps talking)
Adjacency pairs
two utterances spoken by two speakers, one after the other that are relatively ordered ("When are you going home? (first pair part)" "Tomorrow (second pair part)")
Symmetrical adjacency pair
A and B perform the same action (Hello-hello)
Asymmetrical adjacency pair
A's action presents B with a choice (Invitation --> Accept/Reject)
Preference organization
In conversation analysis, refers to the preferred responses in a conversation.
self-repair
a speaker restates or revises a word or phrase to produce it in an error-free fashion or refine it to better reflect the intended meaning
other-repair
a spoken correction prompted by another person
Conversational analysis
a method used by linguistics to study how extralinguistic cues affect communication
Comparative evidence
How we acquire language through listening (cognitive acquisition processes) are universal, and the less structured the grammar is, the harder it becomes to learn
Acquisition of language
we learn languages by learning through what society teaches us (simply just “figuring out the language” through explicit instruction)
Socialization through language
learning a language through the norms and rules about a society (the process of teaching children how to be a specific member of a community or group by learning their traditions, norms, and culture)
Critique of Chompsky
caregivers are more than grammatical input providers
Critique of Ferguson
baby talk is not universal across cultures
Kaluli
They are not treated as interactions partners
Babies are helpless and adults don’t see a need to address utterances
Because adults don’t engage in eye gaze, neither do the babies
Believe you can’t guess what others think, os they don’t engage in utterance expansion and children are responsible for what they say
Samoan
Houses don’t have walls, and instead have wood to lower at night
Children are at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and elders are at the top (especially one from socratic families)
Lower-ranking caregivers (usually siblings) take care if babies, and learn how to ask for their needs known to said caregiver
Maintown
typical suburban middle class community, children are exposed to literacy very early, preschoolers announce their factual or fictional narratives, after three years interactive reading is discouraged
Roadville
white working-class community, children are successful in school in the early grades (the what-explanation phase), but then start lagging behind, since at home, they are NOT exposed to challenging of questions, and need to be taught the difference in structure of real events and fictional ones, and to be reintroduced to active participation in book reading
Trackton
black working-class community, treated like a human, children could have skills to succeed in advanced grades, but they fail in the first grades because they have not acquired at home literacy event skills to analyze the content (manipulate books, answer ques7ons about books) and the social interac7onal rules for SCHOOL literacy events and need to learn to label and give what-explanations, while retaining their analogical skills
the power of print
children learn to respect books, both physically with the pages and with moral respect
Linguistic relatively
the proposal that the particular language we speak influences the way we think about reality, forms one part of the broader question of how language influences thought.
Speech community
a group of people sharing a common language.
Competence
the mental knowledge of a language, the speaker's intrinsic understanding of sound-meaning relations as established by linguistic rules
Performance
that is the actual observed use of language – involves more factors than phonetic-semantic understanding
Affixes
grammatical or relational meaning
Prefixes
Suffixes
Infixes
One word utterances
passive language, each word has many semantic meanings and are heavily context-dependent (hi, dada, dada, nana, up, down)
Two word grammars
children realize that grammatical relations must be overtly expressed. This indicates a change in the child's mind (all-gone, bye, bye, more, pretty)
Open class words
nouns and verbs, meaning, intention, expressiveness (boy, sock, fan, boat, milk, plane)
Literacy events
occasions in which literacy (using printed/written words) is integral to interactions with socially established rules. ex) bedtime stories, stop signs, TV ads.
