LNG 307 Exam 3

Morphology

Study of word components (units of language) and Study of language change (historical linguistics)

Morpheme

smallest meaningful unit of language

Free morpheme

tree, but, sound

Bound morpheme

un-, -est, re-, non-

In english vs inuit words are created by

english: analytic, word/unit order determines meaning

Inuit: agglutinative, words formed by stringers morphemes together

Latin, German: word endings (inflection, derivational) determine grammar & meaning

Morpheme classes

open and closed classes

inflectional

meaning of the root word doesn’t change, so neither does the part of speech (lexical category) 

ALWAYS suffixes in English

• Limited in #

  • Noun endings (-s)

  • Verb endings (-ing, -ed, -s)

  • Adjective endings (-er, -est)

Derivational

usually changes the lexical class

• swim/swimmer

• Adore/adorable

• Bitter/bitterness

• intensify/intensification

How many morphemes are in the following words?

1. Television

2. monsters

3. unimanginable

IDK

Prefix

a word part, like "un-" or "re-," that is attached to the beginning of a base word to change its meaning

suffix

a morpheme added at the end of a word to form a derivative, e.g., -ation, -fy, -ing, -itis.

infix

nfix examples include adding an element inside a word for emphasis or to form plurals 

ex. Infix: bloomin

result: fan-bloomin-tastic

lexical gaps

• no word to express what needs to be said

Social context

•  in-group and out-group cohesion 

  • Social affinity

  • Transgression

  • New exposure (borrowing)

Word Formation strategies

Combining

Shortening

Blending

Shifting

Combining

• Compounding: typewriter

• Prefixing: remix

• Suffixing: chocoholic

• Infixing: fan-f’ing-tastic

Shortening

• Alphabetism: EU, ASAP, BTW

• Acronym: SARS, NASA, RADAR

• Clipping: Plane, Cell

Backformation (removing an affix to form a new word): beg,frag

Blending

• joining one or more words where one is clipped

  • Smog

  • Fantabulous

  • Brunch

Shiftting

• changing a word from one part of speech to another

  • Text

  • Call

  • Post

  • Run

Models of Language Change

• Cascade/Hierarchical Model:

  • Metropolitan/Urban areas to Rural Areas

• Counter-hierarchical model: “fixin’ to”

• Diffusion

  • Geographic influences

• *Generational

  • Young to old

Real rules

• things that make English English

Language ettitquette

• things that make English clearer, easier to read or understand

Invented rules

• things that aren’t generally true, or that only reinforce membership in terms of SE

Standard vs Non-standard english

Challenges to definition:

• Not associated with a specific dialect or locality

• Highly recognizable

• Less “marked” by regional, class, or ethnic distinctions

Some commonalities across definitions:

• Associated with more formal language (written, spoken)

  • Edited Standard English in print

Standard American English (SAE) is a construction

• Socially constructed: taught, not innate

• Elevated to status for social, political, and practical reasons

• “A thoroughly inconvenient fiction built on social elitism and educational privilege” (see p. 37).

• Standard english is construction through choices

Trudgill

theorizes that SE is not a language or an accent, its a social dialect

Discourse

• connected text above the sentence level

  • Basic unit: utterance

Critical discourse analysis:

• connects features of discourse to social, cultural, and political context in which it takes place

Speech Act Theory

• Studies how we do things with language

  • Equates speech and action: how language accomplishes things

Speech acts

locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary

Models of language change

• Cascade/Hierarchical Model:

  • Metropolitan/Urban areas to Rural Areas

• Counter-hierarchical model: “fixin’ to”

• Diffusion

  • Geographic influences

• *Generational

  • Young to old

Descriptive rules

attempt to discover, catalog, and account for linguistic competence (e.g. generative grammar) and linguistic performance.

• Focus on how the language is used.

Prescriptive rules

attempt to enforce what we should say (and how we say it) according to judgements about “right” and “wrong”

Language development milestones

FIRST DAYS to TWO MONTHS:

• At birth, children can hear phonetic distinctions from all languages of the world (so they’re prepared to learn ANY language)

• Children learn to distinguish the intonation of their native language vs. other languages

BY @ FOUR MONTHS:

• Children prefer to hear words over other sounds

 TEN MONTHS:

• Children stop responding to phonetic distinctions that don’t occur in their native language

  • e.g. Japanese children won’t hear distinctions between R&L sounds 

@ ONE YEAR:

• Children will know 50-200 words

TWO to THREE YEARS:

• Children begin developing grammatical fluency

• Begin developing syntactical-fluency: begin with 3-word connections and build from there

Learning exceptions to standard rules:

• Parents infrequently correct grammar of very young children, instead correct factual errorsPinker: “Blocking Principle” is innate:

  • When a child learns an exception to a rule (e.g. strong verbs) they block application of the general rule for this single word/category

@ FOUR YEARS:

• Children have learned most of the central features of grammar

@ AGE THREE & CONTINUING TO @ AGE TEN:

• Energy consumption is twice the level of an adult’s

• Neural pathways develop at tremendous clip

• Students tested in second language perform like native speakers

• See table on p. 325 for rate of vocabulary acquisition

@ AGE EIGHT to PUBERTY:

• Second language performance on tests begins to decline

• Slow adjustment back to adult brain activity begins @ age ten

AFTER PUBERTY:

• Lose correlation between age and second language acquisition skill 

• Second language learners will have non-native accent (phonological interference)