Struc of English Words Vocab 1

4 Branches of Linguistics:

• phonetics

• phonology

• morphology

• semantics

Phonetics

study of human speech sounds; how sounds are produced & perceived

Orthography:

(spelling) (doesn’t always consistently represent sounds of language)

• character vs key vs queen

Articulatory phonetics:

how we produce (articulate) sounds

Acoustic phonetics

physical properties & perception of sound

IPA

International Phonetic Alphabet; one-to-one correspondence between a speech sound & a phonetic symbol

Phonology (definition & examples)

how sounds are organized in a language (mental system for representing/processing/categorizing sounds)

• English has th sounds: [θ] "think" and [ð] "this"

  • (French doesn't, so French speakers use pronunciations such as: tink or sink (for "think"); zis or dis ("this"))

• English words cannot begin with [ŋ] (only end with it like king or singer)

  • Sa words CAN begin

Morphology

study of word structure & formation

Transparant Morphology

base word (and its affixes) remain clear, unchanged, and easy to recognize in both spelling and sound

ex. walks, walking, walked

Opaque morphology

base morpheme/word can’t stand on its own/restricted to certain words; more hidden

ex. reduce, deduce, seduce, etc.

Morpheme (definition & characteristics)

smallest meaningful unit of language

• can’t be divided, contribute to word meaning

Semantics

study of lexical (word) meaning (how we assign meaning to words/how that changes)

4 “problems” of morphemes:

• Morpheme is not the same as a syllable

• 2 morphemes may be homophonous

• Multiple morphemes may be synonymous

• Historical (etymological) meaning is not necessarily the same as current meaning (semantic change)

Homophonous morphemes (definition & examples)

sound the same.

in - capable (in- ‘not’) vs. in- vade (in- ‘into’)

gen- etic (gen- ‘birth, origin’) vs. gen- uflect (gen- ‘knee, angle’)

Synonymous morphemes (definition & examples)

morphemes that mean about the same thing

andr (‘male, man’) GREEK

mascul (‘male’) LATIN

vir (‘man’) LATIN

man (‘man’) GERMANIC

dei (‘God’) LATIN

theo (‘God’) GREEK

God (‘God’) GERMANIC

Examples of semantic change of morphemes

• wife

  • ‘woman’ —> ‘woman of humble rank’ —> ‘female spouse’

• Kleenex

  • brand name of facial tissues —> generic term for facial tissues

Word Analysis Steps

1. Parse the word = divide it into morphemes

2. Gloss the morphemes = write the meaning of each

3. Posit a literal definition based on the glosses

English words come from two sources (what's the difference?):

• Native (inherited)

  • familiar, basic, shorter

• Borrowed 80% (but 20% of the 1,000 most common words)

  • formal, technical, longer

Loanwords/borrowed words (how & why they occur):

words adopted by speakers of one language from a different (source) language (mostly from Greek & Latin in the last 800 yrs)

• consequence of cultural contact between 2 language communities

• usually asymmetrical

• pronunciation is often affected

• WHY:

  • Need (place names (Mississippi), technology (TV, violin), food (burrito, wasabi))

  • Prestige (another language variety has higher social status (inform/tell, rotate/spin, pork/pig)

Categories of native English words:

• body parts

• familial relations

• natural objects

• physical actions

• physical characteristics

Historical Linguistics

study of how languages changes overtime & how they relate to one another 

Sociolinguistics

study of how language & society interact