Linguistics Fundamentals

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering key linguistics concepts including design features, phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as outlined in the lecture notes.

Descriptivism

The practice of describing how people actually use language and what speakers do in practice.

Prescriptivism

The practice of telling people how they should use language based on specific rules, such as “don’t split infinitives.”

Mental grammar

The internal system of rules in the mind that allows a person to produce and understand language, encompassing phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Arbitrariness

A design feature of language where there is no natural connection between a word and its meaning.

Productivity

A design feature of language that allows for the creation of infinite sentences from a finite set of rules.

Displacement

A design feature of language that allows speakers to talk about things that are not present in the immediate environment.

Duality of patterning

A design feature of language where meaningless sounds are combined to form words, which are then combined to form sentences.

Minimal Pairs

Two words that differ by only one sound and have different meanings, such as bat vs. pat.

Place of articulation

A consonant distinction determined by where the sound is made, such as the lips or teeth.

Manner of articulation

A consonant distinction determined by how the airflow is restricted, such as a stop or a fricative.

Voiced

Sounds produced when the vocal cords vibrate, such as $b$ or $d$.

Voiceless

Sounds produced with no vocal cord vibration, such as $p$ or $t$.

Suprasegmentals

Features that occur over sounds, including intonation, stress, and rhythm.

Phoneme

A distinct sound that changes the meaning of a word, such as $/p/$ vs. $/b/$.

Allophone

A variation of a phoneme that does not change the meaning, such as aspirated vs. unaspirated sounds.

Phonotactic Constraints

Rules regarding the allowed combinations of sounds in a language, such as English not allowing “bnick” at the start of a word.

Implicational Laws

Linguistic rules stating that if a language has one feature (X), it must also have another feature (Y); for example, if it has voiced stops, it has voiceless ones.

Assimilation

The process where sounds become more like nearby sounds, such as “input” becoming “imput.”

Derivational morphology

The process of forming words that change the meaning or category of the base word, such as happy becoming happiness.

Inflectional morphology

The process of adding grammatical information to a word without changing its category, such as walk becoming walked.

Allomorphy

The occurrence of different forms of the same morpheme, such as the plural sounds $/s/$, $/z/$, and $/ɦz/$.

Analytic Languages

Languages that use few affixes, such as English.

Synthetic Languages

Languages that use many affixes.

Constituency

The grouping of words into units called phrases, which can be tested through substitution, movement, and coordination.

Open Classes

Grammatical categories such as nouns and verbs where new words can be added.

Closed Classes

Fixed grammatical categories such as prepositions and pronouns.

Formal Definitions

Structure-based definitions used in linguistics that focus on grammatical properties rather than meaning-based 'notional' definitions.

Markedness

The distinction between a default form (unmarked, e.g., singular) and a special form (marked, e.g., plural).

Sense

The conceptual meaning of a word.

Reference

The real-world object a word points to.

Principle of Compositionality

The idea that the meaning of a sentence is the sum of its individual parts.

Idiom Principle

The idea that some meanings, like “kick the bucket,” are not predictable from the literal sum of their parts.

Pejoration

A type of semantic change where a word's meaning shifts over time to become more negative.

Amelioration

A type of semantic change where a word's meaning shifts over time to become more positive.

Implicature

An implied meaning beyond the literal words, such as saying “It’s cold in here” to mean “close the window.”

Cooperative Principle

The theory by Grice that people follow conversational norms including the maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner.

Felicity

The determination of whether a specific utterance is appropriate for its context.

Speech Acts

Actions performed through language, categorized as assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.