ling 15 exam 1

computational system

a system that combines and arranges symbols

conceptual space

everything in existence and everything imaginable

what is the interface between symbols and conceptual space

meaning

arbitrariness

form of the symbol is independent of its meaning/representation (opposite is iconic)

consequences of arbitrariness

1. words have multiple meanings (polysemy/homophony)

2. language changes meaning/pronunciation over time

abstractness

the form of a symbol is simpler than what it represents - opposite is concrete

glyph

written characters that represent phonemes, syllables or whole words (can be letters or symbols &)

discreteness

you can identify separate parts, same components may be used in multiple structures

ambiguity

a symbol has multiple possible interpretations (elevator buttons)

semantics

meaning retrievable from expressions not considering context/background info

lexicalization

Ability of a single meaningful unit to encode one or more semantic concepts or categories

propositional semantics

meanings of complex elements based on the combination of words - literal meaning

pragmatics

additional meaning that can be reconstructed from an expression - context contributing to meaning (‘wow thats really loud’)

indexical meaning

social meaning found in expressions (knowledge about identity/background of speakers in pronunciation and word choice)

idiom

complex structure whose meaning is not predictable from the meanings of its parts (burned the candle from both ends)

extended metaphor

a system in which two or more words demonstrate an analogous metaphorical relationship

form

3 levels of representation = sound system (phonemes), vocabulary, grammar

inventory

the phonemes that a language uses - drawn from larger set of possibilities

participant

a kind of word identified through combination of position and word form

idiom vs metaphor

many idioms contain metaphors but not all metaphors are idioms

predication

one symbol projects semantics onto another (the goose chased the duck)

displacement

a symbol may represent a concept removed in space or time from its form

bird call function

threat alert, food source info, brief and simple

bird songs function

mating or territorial displays, long and elaborate with hierarchical structure

alarm call from birds

source is obscure

mobbing call from birds

source is clear

whale songs

similar to bird songs, have hierarchy, innovation and regionalism

honeybees

marked scout bee returns and performs a dance to tell the other bees where the food source is

animal signals

iconic, not arbitrary, no pragmatic meaning, not semantic, no displacement, no predication

referential communication

specific sounds mean specific things (communication from speaker to listener)

animal comm

holistic, situational, non-remote

human lg

abstract, patterned, combinatorial

phonological syntax

turns sounds that individually have no meaning into ones with meaning

compositional syntax

the order of the sounds have a correct order (birds won’t respond to calls unless notes are in right order)

ways of encoding

lexical (multiple concepts) grammatical (morphology) phrasal (syntax)

typology

the study of different systems of grammatical and other levels of organization

agglutinative

to glue together morphemes/parts

fusional systems

co-expression of multiple concepts into single morphemes

typological cycle

1. agglutinative (fusion)

2. Fusional (erosion)

3. isolating (grammaticization)

seven, ten, hundred

simple numerals

seventeen, sixty

complex numeral

classes of gendered words

nouns and pronouns (spanish and swahili )

just pronouns (english and japanese )

no grammatical gender (finnish hawaiian)

cognates

words with shared source

comparative method

analyze multiple langs for sound shifts, regular differences in traits to track relatedness

borrowings

Cultural constructs (food clothing art tech) - different than cognates

= arbitrariness

chimps associate abstract images with words that have just been spoken

= indexical meaning

an american performer delivers a monologue while portraying an australian accent

= iconic

the angle of a honeybee’s waggle dance inside its hive corresponds to the angle formed by two lines: food source to hive and hive to the sun, what term describes the nature of the dance’s angle as a signal of info ?

= discreteness

animals produce vocal imitations from other sources but can not rearrange internal portions of these signals, which concept do these signals therefore lack?

= constituent order

the relative position of subjects objects and verbs (S O V) within lg

= lexicalization

kid, lamb, calf, pup, cub, kitten, chick, foal = each word is morphologically simple but indicates both species and age

= typology

the focus on traits among languages irrespective of their historical relation to each other

isolating morphosyntactic synthesis

1 to 1 relationship

fusional morphosyntactic synthesis

1 to many morphemes

= pathways of borrowing

many languages around the world have a word for ‘tea’ whose initial consonant is either /t/ or something closer to the ch sound in chai, we can attribute this to

= metonymy

in spanish the word rancho at one time meant ‘modestly proportioned home’ it then came to mean a type of farm, since farms typically would have modest houses, this shift is an example of

metaphor

applying word in different conceptual space

= metaphor

classical latin had a word that meant livestock which meant wealth and old english feoh meant livestock then wealth, these shifts are examples of

= predication

“the duck chased the chicken” who is chasing who