Linguistics Exam 1

Competence

what you know when you know a language; implicit knowledge; what we can’t study directly

Performance

what you actually say and do when you use a language; what we can observe directly

Syntax

word order

Semantics

word meaning

Prescriptive linguistics

Establishes rules for "proper" or "correct" language usage based on a standard norm.

Descriptive Linguistics

Objectively observes, records, and analyzes how a language is spoken and written in everyday life.

Interlinear

multiple lines; space-aligned

Morpheme-by-morpheme

Break up words into meaningful parts

Glossing

Translate piece-by-piece

Content words

“open-class”, relatively infrequent, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

Function words

“closed class”, highly frequent, determiners, quantifiers, prepositions, prounouns, why-words

Non-pulmonic consonants

clicks, implosives

IPA Chart rows

represent the manner of articulation for consonants and the vowel height (tongue height) for vowels

IPA Chart Columns

represent the place of articulation, ordered from the front of the mouth to the back

Palatography

Paint tongue black and ask people to pronounce words, then see where roof of mouth is stained

Typology

What percent of languages include each sound in their sound inventory

McGurk Effect

speech sounds are miscategorized when visual, auditory input mismatch

Minimal pair

set of distinct words that differ by only one phone (sip, zip)

Allophone

a spoken sound that is a predictable, non-contrastive variant of a single abstract sound unit, or phoneme

Contrastive distribution

occurs when two or more distinct sounds (phones) can appear in the exact same phonetic environment, and swapping one for the other changes the meaning of the word

Complementary distribution

a relationship where two or more distinct sounds or forms never appear in the same phonetic or structural environment

Phonological rule

formal expressions in linguistics that explain how abstract underlying sound units (phonemes) change into the actual sounds we pronounce (allophones) based on their phonetic environment

English aspiration rule

[p], [t], and [k] are pronounced with an extra puff of air when they appear at the beginning of a word or a stressed syllable

Scha[e]

Most common vowel in English UNSTRESSED syllables - mid central vowel

Dipthongs

Two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable

Tense vowels

Longer duration; can appear in open syllables (ending in a vowel)

Lax vowels

Shorter duration; in English, generally followed by a consonant (closed syllables)

Vowel mergers

Two vowels are collapsed into one (marry/merry/Mary)

Phonology

The “grammar” (implicit knowledge) governing: how sounds are organized in a language, how pronunciation varies systematically depending on a phone’s surrounding context

Phoneme

a meaningful unit of sound within a specific language

Fortition

strengthening /t/ by aspirating it at the beginning of a stressed syllable

Lentition

weakening /t/ by realizing it as [soft t] in between vowels

Syllable structure

(onset), nucleus, (coda)

Phonotactics

The sequential arrangements of phonological units that are possible in a language.