Linguistics Final Exam Study Set

Sociolinguistics

The study of language as it is used and shaped by society and culture

Historical linguistics

Concerned with language variation across time

Phonetic variation

The differences in the phonetic realization of a language’s phonemes (does not alter the language’s sound structure) AND does not result in any phonemic mergers or splits

Phonetic chain shifts

change in the pronunciation of one sound causes the pronunciation of other sounds to shift in turn (e.g. the Northern Cities Vowel Shift)

Phonological variation

differences in the phonological structure or phonemic inventory of a language variety (accents or in terms of phonemic mergers and splits)

Merger

When two phonemes that were originally different come to be pronounced the same way

Unconditioned merger

two phonemes completely fall together

Conditioned merger

One phoneme merges with another only in a specific conditioning environment

Split

some instances of one phoneme in a specific conditioning environment come to be phonemically differentiated from other instances of that phoneme ( a new, second phoneme out of the first one)

Morphological variation

The differences in the derivational and inflectional morphemes (differences in the forms of words)

Syntactic variation

Differences in the ways that meaning is expressed periphrastically or that phrases are constructed from individual words

Isogloss

The boundary between two specific dialectal features

Exclusive Shared Innovation

refers to linguistic items or expressions that exclude other possibilities, often marking specific meanings within a language.

Idiolect

Individual, personal variations in speech

Dialect

Regional and group or community level variations in speech

Language

dialects are mutually intelligible whereas languages are not

Dialect Swapping

The practice of alternating between different dialects based on context or audience, often seen in multilingual or multicultural environments.