ENGL 475 Test 1

Language

The ability of human beings to communicate by a system of conventional (vocal) signs

Duality of Patterning

The twofold system of language,

consisting of the arrangements of both meaningful

units such as words and morphemes and also of

meaningless units such as phonemes

Phoneme

smallest unit of sound

Morpheme

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Lexis

vocabulary

Morphosyntax

the ways that a word changes its form according to the role it plays in a sentence (dog vs dogs)

Orthography

the system for representing a language

in writing

phonolgy

the study of the sound system of a language

Morphology

Composition of words

Syntax

the arrangement of words in a sentence

Nouns

A person, place, thing, or idea; declined for number and case

Case

When a noun or pronoun changes form based on use (subject, direct object indirect object)

Verbs

action words; conjugated according to person, number, tense, voice, and mood

Adjectives

Describing words

Adverbs

Modify verbs and adjectives

Function words

In-between words used to frame major content words in a sentence (articles, prepositions, conjunctions)

Affixes

parts added to the beginning (prefix) or end (suffix) of a root word to create new words.

Inflectional suffixes

an inflection that is added at the end of a root word

Grammatical gender

Classification of nouns as masculine or feminine.

Demonstrative pronouns

a word that points out a specific person, place, or thing: this, that, these, those

Proximal pronouns

this, these

Distal pronouns

that, those

Indefinite Pronouns

refer to people, places, or things, often without specifying (someone, anyone)

Relative pronouns

Connects a noun to descriptive clause (who, whom, whose)

Free morphemes

can stand alone

Bound morphemes

must be attached to other morphemes

Allomorphs

variants of the same morpheme with different phonemes

Prosodic signals

pitch, stress, tempo made when speaking

syntagmatic change

Language change resulting from the influence of one unit on nearby units before or after it, e.g., assimilation or dissimilation

paradigmatic or associative change

language change resulting from the influence on an expression by other expressions

Strong verbs

Middle vowel can change to form a past tense (don't end in ed, d, or t)

Weak verbs

Past tense end in (ed, d, or t)

diachronic linguistics

study of language development through time

synchronic linguistics

Study of language at a specific time.

Dialect (synchronic)

a variety of language used in a particular place or social group

Register (synchronic)

a variety of language used for particular purpose

Prescriptive grammar

'how you ought to speak' a set of rules designed to give instructions regarding the socially embedded notion of the "correct" or "proper" way to speak or write

descriptive grammar

describes a language - the way that people use it - w/out judging whether the utterance is correct or incorrect

synthetic language

language that uses large numbers of bound morphemes and often compbines strings of them to form a single word.

Place of Articulation

Where the vocal tract is closed or constricted

Manner of articulation

Flow of air

Voicing

state of the glottis

Labial

lips

Bilabial

both lips

/p/ /b/ /m/ /w/

Labiodental

lips and teeth

Dental

teeth

Interdental

tongue between teeth

Alveolar

pertaining to the alveoli (pizza ridge)

alveopalatal

tongue makes contact between the alveolar ridge and the top of the palate "church, judge"

Palatovelar

Either palatal or velar

Stops

Sounds that are formed by stopping the flow of air through the mouth, such as the consonants p, b, t, d, k, and g.

Fricatives

produced by a constant flow of air through the vocal tract (f and v)

Affricates

Combination of a stop and a fricative

Ch and J

Nasals

m, n, ŋ (blocking air through mouth)

Liquids

l, r (relatively open vocal tract)

Semivowels

the consonants y and w, which may also act as vowels in some instances (e.g., -ay, -ow)

voiced sounds

sounds made with the vocal folds vibrating

unvoiced sounds

vocal cords do not vibrate

Tense vowels

/i, e, u, o, ɔ,/ longer in duration and require more muscular effort

Lax vowels

produced without muscular tension, are shorter in duration than tense vowels

Monothong

Single vowel sound.

Dipthong

2 vowels in which the sound begins at the first vowel and moves toward the sound of the second vowel (snout=ou/boy=oy)

Assimilation

The process by which two sounds become more alike

Dissimilation

process by which two nearby sounds become less alike with respect to some feature

Elision

Dropping a sound or syllable in a writing

Aphesis

an initial unstressed vowel is lost

Apheresis (cause over because)

loss of initial sounds including consonants and vowels

Apocope

loss of a sound at the end of a word

Syncope

loss of a sound in a medial position

Intrusion

introduction of an unhistorical sound into a word

metatheis

a reversal in the order of two sounds

Ideographic writing

a writing system whose basic units represent word meanings

Phonographic Writing

a writing system that represents language sound

Syllabic writing

each symbol represents a syllable

Alphabetic writing

Each symbol, ideally, represents a single sound

Diagraphs

pairs of letters that represent single sounds

Ligatures

Two or more letters combined into one character

[i]

"ee" sound

[I]

"i" sound

[e]

"a" sound

[3]

"eh" sound

[ae]

"ah" sound

[^]

"uh" sound

[u]

"oo" sound

[U]

"uhhh" sound

[c]

"aw" sound