Linguistics

Cognitive linguistics

Everything in language is meaningful, different from other approaches to language

Concept

Idea of what something looks like

Prototype

Most thought of member in a category, varies in different cultures, example: dog for pet

Lexicology

Vocabulary, meanings

Sign

A form, which stands for something, that we understand as its meaning

Iconic sign

Mental picture of what it stands for (sign of a toilet)

Indexical signs

Points at meaning (arrow on traffic sign, raising eyebrows)

Symbolic signs

Not present for animals, no natural link to meaning, meaning can change (words, Onomatopoeia= exception)

Principle of indexicality

Egocentric view, Deictic expressions, Deictic orientation, inherent orientation, Anthropocentric perspective

P.I. Egocentric view

Person speaking is center of universe

P.I. Deictic expression

Relates to speaking person, needs context to be understood

P.I. Deictic orientation

Changes when you move

P.I. Inherent orientation

Doesn‘t change because there is an inherent 2front“ and „back“

Principle of Iconicity

Sequential order, Distance, Quantity principle

P. Icon Sequential order

Order in sentence is seen as order of events

P.Icon. Distance

Things which belong together linguistically are put together

P-Icon: Quantity principal

More form → more meaning

Principle of symbolicity

Categories (combination of similar concepts)

Polysemy

Words that do not have only one meaning („over“ has over 60)

Internal structure of categories

Prototype in the middle, Borders not clear

Family relationship (categories)

Prototype is not clear („furniture“)

External structure of categories

Category levels

Superordinate level, general: vehicle

Basic level, basic: plane, car

Superordinate level, specific: convertible, van

Hymonymy

Rare, different meanings of a word are unrelated (Pole Poland and Pole Southpole)

Semasiology

From word to meaning

Onomasiology

From concept to word

Synonymy

Other word for same concept, always slightly different

Antonymy

Words with opposite meaning (Absolute, realtive, relational)

Absolute Antonymy

Either or (dead or alive)

Relative Antonymy

There are states in between (hot or cold, rich or poor)

Relational antonymy

If not one, then not the other (wife and husband, teacher and pupils)

Metonomy

Only mean part of the whole or whole for part

One entity of a conceptual domain is used to refer to another entity of the same domain (he drank the whole bottle)

metaphor

Creates connection between two different domains

Morphology

Study of building elements of words

Free morpheme

Lexical: content words, house, town,..

Grammatical: function words, the, wo

Bound morpheme

Lexical: derivational, -ful, un-, -ish →change of word class

Grammatical: inflectional, -s, -ing, -ed → no change

Allomorph

Looks same but mean sth else (plural s and genitive s)

Affix

Prefix un-

Suffix -ful

Infix -o-

Circumfix German ge-lieb-t

Word formation processes

Compounding

Derivation

Conversion

Backderivation

Lexical blending

Clippings

Acronym

W.f. Compounding

Apple tree, smartphone, lunchbox → first syllable stressed

W.f. Derivation

Unhappy, breathless

W.f. Conversion

Clean → to clean

W.f. Lexical blending

Smoke+fog= smog

Clippings

Telephone → phone

Acronym

United States of America → USA

Being schema

What is someone like?, who is someone?,

Happening schema

Process without someone actively involved

Not a willful action

Role of a Patient

Doing schema

Willful action

Energy flow from Agent to Patient

Usually controlled by first participant

Experiencing schema

Something happens and it affects someone

Mental words

Experiencer and Patient

No energy flow

Having schema

Material possession, someone owns something

Mental possession

Affected- affection (John has the flu)

Whole- part (the table has three legs)

Kinship relation

Possessor

Moving schema

Happening/doing+movement

Source, starts there

Path, where it passes by

Goal, where it goes to

→S,P,G in spatial, temporal or abstract/ metaphorical sense

Transferring schema

Happening/having/doing+moving

Three participants: Agent- Receiver- Patient

Goal is meant to receive it at the end, Receiver just (shortly) receives

Copulative pattern

Link between complement and subject

Intransitive pattern

Subject and verb

Transitive pattern

Direct object involved (two participants)

Distransitive pattern

Two objects

Complement pattern

Includes preposition

Transitive-complement pattern

Fuses transitive and complement pattern

Phonemes

Smaller than morphemes

No meaning by themselves

Phonetics

How sounds are produced

Phonology

Looks at one language system

Ways in which sounds can be combined

Phonation

Vocal folds brought together (voiced)

Vocal folds held apart (voiceless)

Voiced and voiced/ unvoiced and unvoiced always go together

P.a. Bilabial

\[p\] \[b\] \[m\] lower and upper lip

P.a. Dental

Tongue tip and top teeth

P.a. Alveolar

\[t\] \[d\] \[n\] \[l\] \[s\] \[z\] tongue tip and alveolar ridge

Also often \[r\]

P.a. Alveopalatal

Tongue front (excluding tip) and back of alveolar ridge

P.a. Palatal

\[J\] tongue blade and back part of alveolar ridge

P.a. Velar

\[k\] \[g\] tongue back and velum(soft palate)

P.a. Glottal

Glottal stop (bo‘el o‘ wo‘er) glottis

M.a. stop/ plosive

\[p\] \[b\] \[t\] \[d\] \[k\] \[g\] \[ \]

Complete blocking of air stream

M.a. Fricatives

Very narrow gap between articulators

Airstream passes through the gap under high pressure→ friction

M.a. Affricates

Stops immediately followed by fricatives

M.a. difficult to classify

\[h\], a kind of fricative

M.a. Nasals

\[m\] \[n\] blocking of oral airstream by lowering the velum, air escapes through the nose

Always voiced

M.a. approximants

\[r\] \[l\] \[J\] \[w\] articulated with only minimal constriction → almost no friction

Diphthongs

Sequence of two vowels within a single syllable (glide)

AmE Rhotic → less diphthongs

Universalism

Meanings/ concepts are universal

Human thoughts are similar over the world

Linguistic relativity (Whorf)

Differences in linguistic concepts play key role

Culture plays key role in understanding

Grammar influences way in which you perceive the world → sometimes constricts

NSM (natural semantic metalanguage)

Language about language

Only about 60 semantic primes exist in ever language

Ex. I, you, one, many

Allolexes

One word can be expressed by different words in different contexts

Agglutinating languages

Use morphemes to change meanings of words

Lexical elaboration

When one language has a lot of words for one field/ area

Cultural script

How you behave in a culture (politeness)

(…) reduplication

Bella bella → more emotional

Cultural key words

Most important words for a culture

Eng. Work, love, freedom

Ger. Heimat

Pragmatics, three general functions

Ideational: talking about ideas, information (roughly informative act)

Interpersonal: regulating social contacts (obligative)

Phatic: acknowledging the other ones existence (how are you? Im fine, you?) (constitutive)

Pragmatics

Study of how people interact when using language

Speech acts

Constitutive: words ARE act itself, constitute new reality

Informative: based on knowledge

Obligative: based on volition

Constitutive acts

Expressive (informal): thank, praise, apologize, greet

Declarative (formal): name, marry, sentence, pronounce

Informative acts

Assertive: assert, state, describe, assume

Information questions: ask

Obligative acts

Directive (other): request, order, propose, advise

Commissive (self): promise, offer

Felicity conditions

When speech acts work

Right framework, institution, circumstances

Presupposition

Assuming certain pieces of information are known to all people you are speaking with

Assumed background knowledge

Implicatures

Implying something without saying it directly

\-conversational

\-conventional: taking back what you said with „but“

Cooperative principle

Hearer and speaker have to cooperate for conversation to work

Maxim of quality (truth)

Of quantity (amount of information → everything necessary but not more)

Of relevance

Of manner (way in which you speak, clear + polite, highly culture specific)

→can be flouted

Development of linguistic knowledge (stages)

Prelinguistic stage

Babbling

First words

Two-word stage

Complete utterances

Prelinguistic stage

Universal

Stimulus-controlled noises

Posses sensory+motoric abilities to produce and comprehend speech

Babbling

6th month start

Specific linguistic ability with all kinds of phonemes

At first: production of all kinds of sounds

Later: restricted set of phonetic forms found in language input (vocally/manually)

Resemblence of intonation of adults, semantically different intonation contours → first linguistic contrasts

First words

Around 12th months

Relation sound and meaning

„One word= one sentence“ phase→ holophastic sentences

Functions:-linked to own action/ desire for action

\-convey emotion

\-naming function

Generally monosyllabic with consonant-vowel sequence

Probably first acquire sounds present in all languages

Two-word stage

24th month

Clear syntactic and semantic relations

Intonation contour extends over whole utterance

No syntactic/ morphological markers (inflection/tense/..)

Pronouns rare

Complete utterances

Lack small function words (grammatical morphemes) like „to“ „is“

Only content words

„Telegraphic speech“

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