Linguistics Flashcards

Flashcards from Linguistics lecture notes, covering phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Linguistics

The scientific study of language.

Phonetics

The science of human speech sounds.

Phone

Concrete; human sound; physical realization of phoneme.

Phoneme

Abstract minimal sound unit; capable of distinguishing different words.

Allophone

Non-distinctive variant of a phoneme.

Minimal Pair Technique

Words almost identical except for ONE SOUND in the SAME POSITION.

Articulatory Phonetics

Examines the articulatory (vocal) organs and their role in the production of speech sounds.

Acoustic Phonetics

Deals with the physical properties of speech sounds as they travel through the air.

Auditory Phonetics

Examines the way in which human beings perceive speech sounds through the medium of the ear.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

A transcription system that contains symbols for the hundred or so speech sounds that can be distinguished in human language.

Monophthong

A single vowel sound. Examples: /i/seen /e/day /u/food.

Diphthong

A complex two-vowel sound. Examples: /al/hi/awe /I/toy.

Triphthong

A three-vowel sound that glides together. Examples: /aU/+/ǝ/ = [aUe] hour, /al/ +/ǝ/ = [ale] fire.

Plosive/Stop

Consonant sound produced with complete blockage of the vocal tract.

Fricative

Consonant sound produced with impeded, but not blocked, airflow.

Affricate

Consonant sound produced with blocked airflow then released.

Nasal

Consonant sound produced with airflow through the nose.

Liquids

Consonant sounds with some obstruction, but not enough to cause friction.

Glides

Consonant sounds always followed by a vowel, and not found at the end of words.

Phonology

The study of the sound system of language and the rules that govern pronunciation.

Syllable

A phonological unit consisting of one sound (or a group of sounds).

Onset

Consonants or consonant blends before the rime.

Rime/Rhyme

Consists of a nucleus (usually a vowel) and the consonant(s) following it.

Nucleus

Usually a vowel; sometimes a consonant sonorant.

Coda

Any consonant following the rime/rhyme.

Blend

Two or more consonants; when combined, two sounds are heard.

Digraph

Two or more consonants; when combined, one sound is heard.

Sibilant

A hissing sound; most are fricative.

Allophones

Systematic variations of a phoneme.

Assimilation

A process that results from a sound becoming more like another nearby sound.

Dissimilation

A process that results in two sounds becoming less alike.

Deletion

A process that removes a weak segment from certain phonetic contexts.

Insertion

A process that inserts a syllable or non-syllabic segment within an existing string.

Metathesis

A process that reorders or reverses a sequence of segments.

Morphology

The study of word formation; the study of morphemes and words.

Morpheme

The smallest meaningful unit of language.

Lexeme

The basic unit of the word/root word/base form.

Lexical Morpheme

Have a sense in and of themselves; content words (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs).

Grammatical Morpheme

Express some relationship between Lexical Morphemes; function words (prepositions, articles, conjunctions).

Free Morpheme

Can stand alone as words.

Bound Morpheme

Cannot stand alone as words; affixes.

Inflectional Morpheme

All are in the form of suffixes; does NOT affect category.

Derivational Morpheme

Can be a prefix or suffix; can change syntactic category; sometimes affects the meaning or SENSE.

Null/Zero Morpheme

Morphemes NOT physically present in the word.

Empty Morpheme

Present in form but with NO actual meaning.

Allomorph

A variant form of a morpheme.

Category Extension

The extension of a morpheme from one syntactic category to another.

Derivation

Word formation by adding derivational affixes.

Back Formation

A word formed by removing what is mistaken for an affix; change in it's structure.

Clipped Form

A shortened form of a preexisting morpheme; NO change in syntactic form.

Compounding

Creating a new word by combining two free morphemes.

Blending

A combination of parts of two preexisting forms.

Root Creation

A brand-new word based on no preexisting morpheme.

Folk Etymology

A process that forms a word by substituting a common native form for an exotic form with a similar pronunciation.

Acronym

A word formed from the first letter(s) of each word in a phrase.

Abbreviation

A word formed from the names of the letters of the prominent syllables of a word.

Syntax

The study of sentence structure and phrases.

Phrase

An expression that is a constituent in a sentence; the expansion of a head (keyword).

Clause

A group of words that may contain a subject and a predicate and is used as a part of a sentence.

Sentence

Composed not directly out of words but of constituents which may consist of more than one word called phrases.

Semantics

The study of word meaning.

Lexical Decomposition

Represents the sense of a word in terms of the semantic features that comprise it.

Homonymy

Two or more phonologically and orthographically identical lexemes have completely different, unrelated meanings.

Polysemy

The meaning of one lexeme is metaphorically extended on the basis of some similarity.

Synonymy

Two words are synonymous if they have the same sense.

Hyponymy

A word that contains the meaning of a more general word (superordinate).

Antonymy

Two words are antonyms if their meanings differ only in the value for a single semantic feature.

Referent

The entity identified by the use of a referring expression.

Extension

The set of all potential referents for a referring expression.

Prototype

A typical member of the extension of a referring expression.

Stereotype

A list of characteristics describing a prototype.

Coreference

Two linguistic expressions that refer to the same real-world entity.

Anaphora

A linguistic expression that refers to another linguistic expression following the antecedent-pronoun pattern.

Cataphora

A linguistic expression that refers to another linguistic expression following the pronoun-antecedent pattern.

Deixis

A deictic expression that has one meaning but can refer to different entities depending on the speaker.

Entailment

A proposition expressed in a sentence that follows necessarily from another sentence.

Presupposition

A proposition expressed in a sentence that must be assumed to be true in order to judge the truth or falsity of another sentence.

Pragmatics

The study of language use in particular situations (linguistic and physical context).

Implicature

An implied proposition or statement that is not part of the utterance.

Conversational Maxims

Principles that guide how people should communicate in conversations for effective and cooperative communication.

Speech Acts

Utterances that perform actions.

Locutionary Act

The act of simply uttering a sentence from a language.

Illocutionary Act

What the speaker does in uttering a sentence (e.g., requesting, promising, apologizing).

Perlocutionary Act

The effect of the utterance on the hearer (e.g., persuading, convincing, scaring).