Linguistics Lecture Review

Flashcards for reviewing key concepts and terms from the linguistics lecture.

Prescriptive Grammar

The creation of prescriptive rules regarding language use.

Descriptive Grammar

Looking at different language behaviors in different people without judgment.

Competence (linguistics)

The unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows a speaker to use and understand a language.

Performance (linguistics)

The actual use of language in concrete situations.

Ambiguity

Sentences or words with two structures with distinct meanings.

Recursion in Language

A linguistic unit containing another unit of the same kind, allowing for infinite sentences.

Tree Diagrams (linguistics)

Represents the hierarchical structure created by grammatical rules.

Structural ambiguity

Sentences or words with two structures with distinct meanings.

Empiricists

Emphasize the importance of experience in language acquisition, suggesting only general cognitive abilities are required.

Nativists

Emphasize innate, domain-specific knowledge is required for language acquisition.

Connectionism

An empiricist view that uses Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to explain language acquisition as a general-purpose learning device.

Universal Grammar

Innate knowledge that humans have that allows them to acquire language despite limited experience.

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Affects grammatical development but leaves IQ intact, suggesting language is separate from general intelligence.

Williams Syndrome

Causes general cognitive deficits, including in IQ, but leaves grammatical knowledge intact; contrasts with SLI.

Language Models (LLMs)

Computer programs that predict the next word in a sequence based on training on large datasets; used in chatbots.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

A system to write phonemes down precisely, with a one-to-one relationship between symbols and phonemes.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of language that carries meaning.

Compositionality

The principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituents and how they are combined.

Bound Morpheme

A morpheme that cannot stand alone and must be attached to another morpheme.

Free Morpheme

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word.

Syntax

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

Constituency

A meaningful group of words within a sentence.

Proform substitution test

linguists assume that if a proform can stand in for a group of words, then that group of words must form a constituent.

Language universals (principles)

It is a universal language that the words of a sentence are arranged hierarchically into larger phrases. Such universals are commonly called principles.

Language universals (parameters)

There are also points in the arrangement of words in a sentence where languages can differ. We refer to these choice points as parameters

Reflexive stage

Birth to 8 weeks old, produces sounds that are reflexes of natural biological functions: crying, sucking,burping, breathing.

Cooing stage

8 to 10 weeks children produce extended vowel sounds sometimes with an initial consonant, forming a simple syllable

Vocal Play stage

5 months to 6 months)Children begin to produce a much wider array of vowel and consonant sounds,and combine them into a wide array of syllables.

Babbling Stage

6 months to 12 months), more systematic and repetitive than vocal play.

Holophrastic

whole phrase stage, 1 year old)children produce their first words.

Two Word Stage

1.5 years old, children begin to combine words into two word utterances, entering the two word stage.

Telegraphic speech stage

2 years old, children produce longer and more complex sentences, but largely Omit functional words and Grammar Explosion (MLU 2.25) and overregularization: Also at this stage, children commit overregularization errors.

Gyrus

a ridge of the cerebral cortex. Also called a convolution.

Sulcus

a furrow of the cerebral cortex. Plural sulci also called a fissure, especially for the major sulci.

Phineas Gage

impulse control, decision making, His personality was reported to have changed from resolve and courteous to impertous and blunt(even rude).

Henry Molaison

episodic long-term memory, Suffered a head injury in a bicycle accident as a small child. Which based increasingly severe seizures

Structural MRI

measures the location and density of hydrogen to create an image of the anatomical structure inside the body including the brain.

functional MRI (fMRI)

a special technique that allows us to look for oxygenated hemoglobin instead of hydrogen.

Aphasia

Language function typically localized in left hemisphere.

Broca’s aphasia

Damage to Broca's area (left inferior frontal gyrus).

Wernicke’s aphasia

Damage to Wernicke’s area (posterior superior temporal gyrus).

Critical Periods in development

A span of lifetime during which humans must acquire a first language or risk being unable to acquire full competence in any language.

Simultaneous morphology

Rather than use sequential affixation, asl takes advantage of the fact that the visual-manual modality allows for simultaneous articulation of the primary sign and a secondary motion to add information

Pidgin

A communication system developed by adults who do not share a language but need to communicate - not full languages, lack consistent vocabulary

Creole

A full human language that emerges from a community in which children still in critical period get pidgin as input. Larger, stable vocabulary and consistent grammar.

Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN)

A new sign language that emerged at a school for the deaf in Managua, Nicaragua, showing spatial grammar.

Sign Languages (handshape)

Uses more than 50 handshapes in formation of signs

Animal Communication: Koko

Great apes and attempts to teach sign language.