Linguistics Exam 2

phonology

the study of the systematic organization of sounds in languages

phoneme

the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish meaning in a language

minimal pairs

pairs of words that differ by only one phoneme, demonstrating that this sound change alters meaning

ex: pop and cop

What is the International Phonetic Alphabet?

A standardized system for phonetic notation that provides a consistent way to represent the sounds of spoken languages. It encompasses symbols for each distinctive sound to facilitate pronunciation and linguistic analysis

Articulation

the physical production of speech sounds, involving the movement of the tongue, lips, and other speech organs.

Active articulators

are the parts of the vocal tract that move to produce speech sounds, such as the tongue and lips.

Consonants

involve a high degree of closure or constriction in the vocal tract. turbulent and lower amplitude

vowels

involve relatively open articulation produced as tones, non-turbulent and louder

Phonotactics

The rules that govern possible sequences of phenomes

Phonological rule

The generalized rules about disallowed sequences of phonemes

Flapping

rapid, single movement of the tongue to produce a sound, typically replacing a voiceless consonant like ‘t’ or a voiced one like ‘d’ when it occurs between vowels in unstressed syllables 

ex: butter and budder 

phonological rules

Generalization about disallowed sequences of phonemes

compositionally

the meaning of a complex expression is derived from the meaning of its parts and the way the parts are combined by the rules of language

morphology

the study of the structure of words

morpheme

the smallest unit of language that carries meaning

bound morphemes

aka affix

they can’t stand on their own as words

like un-

Free morphemes

morphemes that can stand on their own

Prefixes

affixes that precede the stem

suffixes

affixes that follow the stem

infixes

affixes that are inserted in the stem

2 types of affixes

derivational and inflectional

derivational

morphemes are described as creating a new word, adding new content, and often changing category

ex: -ful, contributes to full of ___

inflectional

morphemes described as creating a new form of the same word, adding only grammatical content, and never changing category

ex: -ed, contributes to meaning of past tense

compounding

word formation that must take place before inflection

ex: toothbrush not teethbrush

productivity

a rule is more productive if it applies to a larger percentage of words in a category

irregular inflectional rule

one that applies to a small # of words of a category

ex: -es, sang, ate, mice

constituency tests

helps identify particular grouping of words of a sentence 

Constituent

meaningful group of words within a sentence

proform

an expression that can stand in for another expression of a sentence

ex: a pronoun

Marie recovered

Phil did, too

Phase Structure Grammar 

set of rules designed to generate the grammatical sentences with constituent structures that linguists identify with their tests

distribution

how linguists identify the categories of words

functional categories

other categories linguists identify for word that perform specific grammatical functions

Auxiliary verb

Jess ____ read the book

might, must, will, can

Complementizer

She knows ___ it happens

that, whether, if

Determiner

____ student read the book

Every, no, this, a(n), one

SVO languages

languages with basic sentence structure

subject, verb, object

principles

common to all languages, don’t have to be learned

parameters

points in an arrangement of words

phoneme inventory

set of phonemes used in a language

how are vowels classified? 

three properties of articulation, height and frontness of tongue, and lip rounding

properties of acquisition 

universality, uniformity, rapidity, consistency of stages

positive evidence

evidence that a sentence is a grammatical sentence of your language

negative evidence

evidence that a sentence isn’t a grammatical sentence of your language

perception

ability to differentiate between speech sounds

habituation studies

a child hears a recorded sound over and over until they get bored by it, then the sounds is changed and researched look for indications that the child has renewed interest

Stages of development:

reflexive, cooing, vocal play, babbling

reflexive

birth to 8 weeks

children produce sounds that are reflexes of natural biological functions

uninterrupted vowel like sounds

cooing

8 weeks to 20 weeks

produce extended vowel sounds sometimes with an initial consonant

vocal play

5 month to 6 months 

produce wider array of vowel and consonant sounds and combines them into a wide array of syllables

phonemes

babbling

6 months to 12 months

systemic and repetitive

6 months: repeat simple syllables

6-10 months: babbling is varied

10-12 months: babbling is restricted to include only sounds from the caregivers language

one word, holophrastic stage

1 year, children say 1st word

2 word stage

1.5 yrs, vocabulary explosion: at this stages, children can acquire 12 new words a day

telegraphic stage

2 yrs, longer and more complex sentences, omits functional words and inflectional affixes

grammar explosion

2.5 yrs, children show knowledge of recursion and use inflectional affixes and functional words consistently and correctly

over-regularization errors: foots for feet. this shows acquired regular rules of inflection

possibilities for a child to acquire language:

Child uses 1 strategy at 1 stage and other strategy at another stage

Child use different strategies with different lexical items

Lexical learning

process of acquiring new words and their meaning, focused on learning language in chunks rather than individual words and grammar rules

Jean Berko

Rule learning

people extract and generalize abstract grammatical structures from linguistic input to produce and understand language

Jean Berko

Acquiring Irregulars:

Step 1: past forms appear

Step 2: rule formation and overregularization

Step 3: Children can form past tense and learns exceptions