human communication final

language

an instinct to acquire an art

assumptions

infants make _____ about the sound patterns of their language (phonology)

inferences

infants make accurate _____ about the possible meaning of novel words

parts of speech, grammatical rules, and generativity

universal aspects of language

svo order

culture-specific parts of language

magical

misconception: language has ______ powers

how, what

misconception: language affects ___ and ____ we think

emotionally

misconception: some words are _______ loaded affecting how we feel

linguistic determinism

linguistic distinctions determine thoughts

linguistic relativism

linguistic distinctions bias (but don’t determine) thought

sound

to know a word is to know the meaning of that _______

morphology

the linguistic study of the form and structure of words

potential pause

people tend to pause between words rather than within words

indivisibility

people tend to add new words between existing words rather than within them

minimal free forms

the smallest speech sounds that can meaningfully stand on their own

phonetic boundaries

in some languages, sounds mark the end of words

content words

nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

open class words

we can add new words to these classes

function words

specify grammatical relations and have little or no semantic content

closed class words

difficult/impossible to add new words to this class

morphemes

smallest unit of meaning and form

words

_____ are generally morphemes that can stand on their own

rules for combining morphemes

morphology describes

discreteness

what makes language generative and creative

free morphemes

multi-syllable morphemes that can stand alone (like girl and boy)

affixation

there’s a lot of variation in

infixes

morphemes that are inserted in the middle of words

circumfixes

affixes that are placed at the beginning and end of a sentence; also called discontinuous morphemes

prefixation

putting an affix before a word

suffixation

putting an affix after a word

conversion

a change in class without change in form

compounding

two words are added together

back-formation

a simpler words derived from a more complex derived words

clippings

informally shortening a word

acronyms

words derived from other words making up a name

blends

two words are merged together

derivational

focus on the construction of new words; changes content words

internal

we can generate new words because words have ______ grammars

inflectional morphology

distinguishes variations of the same word

derivational morphology

distinguishes different words that are related to one another

productive

inflectional morphemes are more _______ than derivational morphemes

head

the _____ of compounds carries its core or basic meaning

compounds

_____ are special because their meaning is more than what can be gleaned from the individual morpheme that make them up

malapropisms

confusion in word meaning due to ambiguity in underlying morphemes

phonology

the study of the patterns of sounds in a language

rules

phonology describes the _____ used by languages to combine particular phonemes

phonotactics

phonological knowledge regarding constraints/rules governing the pairing of specific phonemes and phonological features

morphological

_____ knowledge allows us to treat the same phoneme as different

phonological

____ knowledge allows us to treat different phonemes as the same

phone

a sound unit, physical sounds

phoneme

the basic units of linguistically relevant sounds

minimal pairs

two words that are identical except for a difference in sound

distinctive features

_______ allow us to discriminate phonemes

assimilation

when sounds are influenced by neighboring sounds

assimilation rule

vowels are nasalized before a nasal segment

aspiration

release of air after onset of voicing; pushing breath outward

allophones

variations of a single phoneme

phonetics

the study of the sounds of speech

system

need a ____ of symbols to get a one-to-one correspoondence

alveolars

tongue raised to the alveolar ridge

palatals

constriction of air occurs by raising the front part of the tongue to the palate

velars

produced by raising the back of the tongue to the soft palate or velum

glottals

produced by air flowing through an open glottis and past the tongue and lips in preparation for a vowel sound which always follows sounds

place of articulation

where in the vocal tract the airflow restrictions occurs

manner of articular

how airflow is constricted as it goes through the vocal tract

voicing

sounds produced by vibrations of vocal folds

stops

blocking the flow of air through the mouth; short, sharp sound

glottal

sounds where the airstream is completely blocked for a short period of time; all other sounds are continuants

nasals

sounds produced with the velum down, channeling air through the nose and mouth

fricatives

continuous sounds produced by severely constricting airflow through the mouth

afficatives

has features of a stop and a fricative

glides

produced with little obstruction of the airstream; they are always followed by a vowel; never occur at the ends of words

liquids

produced by blocking airstream through the mouth without causing complete constriction or friction

orals

all air flows through the mouth/velum is up, block air going into nose

voiced

vowels are always _____

nasal

english doesn’t have ____ vowels

height, backness, rounding

vowels are classified along three dimensions

grammar

the study of sentence structure

syntax

grammar at the sentence or phrase level

coordination

join two complete clauses of equal grammatical status

subordination

one clause functions as part of a main clause

surface structure

aspects of language that change from language to language

deep structure

aspects of language that are invariant and universal; shared by all languages of the world

the linguistic program

understand what aspects of language are universal and which are culture/language-specific

surface structure

varies cross linguistically

syntax rules

__________ provide distinct meaning independently of words

structure dependent

grammatical rules are _______

lexical, phrasal

sentences include ____ and _____ categories

phrasal categories

noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, prepositional phrases, and adverbial phrases

lexical cetegories

parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective, preposition, adverb

transitive

verbs’ actions can be ______

head

initial lexical category marking the phrasal category

specifiers

optional category preceding the head, specifier position may be empty

complement

optional phrasal category occurring next to the head, elaborates meaning

selection

different phrasal categories select different complements and specifiers

Wh- question

stands alone as answer to a question about sentence

replacement

can the hypothesized constituent be replaced with another word

movement

can you move the constituent without altering the meaning of the sentence

it-clefts

insert hypothesized constituents in the cleft

ambiguous

cannot evaluate the truth condition