Introduction to General Linguistics: The Sounds of Language

Flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the 'Introduction to General Linguistics: The Sounds of Language' lecture. This set includes definitions related to the nature of human language, the field of linguistics and its sub-branches, properties of language, and distinctions in linguistic rules.

Ethnologue

A database that catalogues living languages, reporting more than 7,159 languages in use today, with over 3,000 considered endangered.

Human Languages (Shared Traits)

Despite differences in sounds, articulations, sound patterns, words, word order, and ways of expressing meaning or politeness, all human languages share a common set of underlying traits.

Linguistics

The systematic study of language structure and use.

Semantics

The sub-field of linguistics that studies meaning.

Syntax

The sub-field of linguistics that studies sentences and their structure.

Morphology

The sub-field of linguistics that studies words and their structure.

Phonology

The sub-field of linguistics that studies sound patterns in language.

Phonetics

The sub-field of linguistics that studies speech sounds.

Linguist (Myth 1)

A linguist is not simply someone who knows a lot of languages.

Linguist (Myth 2)

Linguists are not 'grammar police' focused on enforcing prescriptive rules.

Language

A shared system for communicating ideas through articulation and perception, involving linguistic signals like sound or light waves.

Mental Grammar

The properties (rules, constraints) of the shared language system, representing a language user's internalized knowledge.

Systematic (Languages)

All languages, dialects, or varieties are governed by 'rules' at all levels of linguistic structure.

Creative (Languages)

All languages, dialects, or varieties are productive, generative, infinite, and always changing in constrained ways.

Hierarchical Structure of Language

Language is organized into levels, from sounds to syllables, words, and phrases.

Grammatically Unacceptable Sentence (*)

An asterisk (*) placed before a sentence, word, or phrase indicates that it is considered grammatically unacceptable by speakers of that language.

Linguistic Competence

A language user's innate knowledge of what is possible and impossible in their language, guided by mental grammar.

Prescriptive Rules

Rules that dictate how someone tells you language should be used (e.g., grammar learned in school), often focusing on 'correctness'.

Descriptive Rules

Rules that describe how language is actually used by speakers, reflecting their internal grammar.

Linguistic View on Dialects/Accents

From a linguistic perspective, no dialect or accent of a language is inherently more 'correct' than another; all naturally acquired languages and dialects are governed by systematic rules.

Sounds vs. Letters

Speech sounds are distinct from written letters; the same letter can represent different sounds, and the same sound can be represented by different letters.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

A universal system designed to represent speech sounds unambiguously, where each unique sound has a unique symbol.