Language & Mind Midterm 1 - Terms

Linguistics

The study of human language.

Cognitive science

The study of the human mind.

Mental grammar

The system of rules and constraints stored in the mind of a speaker that generates the words and sentences of that speaker’s language.

Lexicon

The mental dictionary of sound-meaning pairs.

Phonology

The study of how to pronounce sounds in combination with others.

Morphology

The study of how to build complex words out of parts.

Syntax

How to combine words into sentences.

Semantics

How to understand what sentences mean.

Inflection

A morphological process that modifies a word to express different grammatical categories without changing its part of speech.

Derivation

A morphological process that creates a new word with a new meaning and often a new part of speech.

Productivity

The capability of inflectional and derivational affixes to attach to words.

Isolating/analytic languages

Languages that avoid affixes and use free forms instead. One word approx corresponds to one morpheme

Synthetic (agglutinating, fusional, polysynthetic) languages

Languages that use inflection and agglutination to express syntactic and semantic relationships.

Agglutination

Combination of two or more morphemes into one word; widely use affixes, which typically represent a single piece of grammatical info

Cliticization

The process by which clitics behave like words in meaning and function but cannot stand alone due to phonological reasons.(Like contraction part of contractions)

Conversion

Assigning an already existing word a new lexical category. (a ship → to ship)

Clipping

Shortening a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables. (influenza → flu)

Blending

Creating words from non-morphemic parts of two already existing items (hungry + angry → hangry)

Backformation

Creating a new word by removing a real or supposed affix from another word (enthusiasm → enthuse)

Alternation

Substituting one non-morphemic segment for another to mark a grammatical contrast. (sing → sang)

Suppletion

Replacing one morpheme by a completely different one. (go → went)

Needs for linguistic competence

Lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics

Morpheme

Smallest unit of meaning

Affix

A bound morpheme that is part of a complex word but does not belong to any lexical category

Fusional/inflectional languages

Widely use affixes, affixes typically express several pieces of grammatical info

Polysynthetic languages

Words are composed of many morphemes. Highly inflected. Have long sentence words.