Lecture Notes on Language and Communication

Flashcards on Language and Communication

Language

The mental and physical capacity to use individual languages.

Design features

Features present in all human languages but not in animal communication systems.

Productivity

Humans can communicate about new experiences.

Cultural transmission

Humans learn language through interaction; animal skills are mostly innate.

Displacement

Humans can communicate about things not present; animal communication is restricted.

Arbitrariness

Forms of human language are generally not tied to their meanings.

Double articulation

Human language combines meaningless elements to produce meaningful words.

Broad definition of language

A conventionalized system of symbols used by humans for communication and thought.

Linguistics

The scientific study of human language.

Linguistic

Related to language or linguistics.

Linguist

A professional language scientist.

Lexicographers

Dictionary editors.

Etymology

Word origins.

Prescriptivism

Judging language usage as good or bad.

Ungrammatical Utterance

It would not be deliberately produced by native speakers of that variety

Applied linguistics

Motivates theoretical research and informs applied areas.

Theoretical linguistics research questions

Compares sounds across languages, studies speech variation, investigates language ancestry.

Applied areas

Informed by theoretical linguistics; includes speech therapy, instruction, and translation.

Typology

Studies worldwide distributions of linguistic phenomena to find universals.

Absolute universals

All languages have X.

Statistical universals

Most languages have X.

Implicational universals

If a language has X, it also has Y.

Levels of Linguistic Analysis

Sounds, words, sentences, meaning.

Phonetics

Studies actual speech sounds (phones).

Phonology

Studies the mental representation of speech sounds (phonemes).

Phonetics Sub-fields

Articulatory, acoustic, and auditory.

Consonants

Produced with airflow obstruction

Vowels

No obstruction.

Consonant description

Place and manner of articulation, and voicing.

Place of articulation

Where the obstruction occurs in the vocal tract.

Manner of articulation

The type of obstruction.

Voicing

Vibration of the vocal cords.

Articulators

Parts involved in causing the obstruction.

IPA

A special set of symbols for speech sounds.

Vowel Parameters

Tongue height, tongue backness, lip rounding, and nasality.

Semi-vowels

Glides, approximants.

Diphthongs

Vowel sounds that change articulation.

Phonemes

Sounds that make a difference in meaning.

Minimal pairs

Words of the same length differing by one sound.

Segmental phonology

The study of phonemes.

Suprasegmental phonology

The study of sound strings.

Syllable

Vowel-like nucleus, potentially surrounded by consonants.

Word stress

One syllable being louder, longer, or higher

Free word stress

Not predictable.

Morphemes

Meaning-bearing parts of words

Sign

Conventionalized pairing of meaning and sound.

Simplex words

One morpheme.

Complex words

Multiple morphemes.

Roots

Can often be simplex words themselves.

Affixes

Cannot stand alone.

Compounds

Words combining multiple roots.

Prefixes

Affixes before the root.

Suffixes

Affixes after the root.

Morphological typology

Parameters include the number and function of affixes.

Inflectional affixes

Apply to virtually all words of a word class.

Derivational affixes

Apply to subsets of a word class.

Degree of synthesis

How many affixes a word can take.

Degree of fusion

Unpredictable phonological changes across morphemes.

Analytic forms

Few affixes

Synthetic forms

Many affixes

Syntax

Studies the combination of words.

Word classes

Nouns and verbs are found in every language.

Nouns

Inflect for number and case.

Verbs

Inflect for tense and person.

Concord

Heads trigger agreement on modifiers.

Subject NP

Triggers agreement on the verb.

Object NP

Does not trigger agreement.

SVO

Subject-Verb-Object order.

Agent

Participant initiating an action.

Patient

Participant affected by the action.

Valency

Determines the number and kind of NPs required by a verb.

Clause

Smaller than a sentence; complex sentences have multiple.

Clause types

Statements, questions, demands.

Semantics

Inherent meaning.

Pragmatics

Contextual meaning.

Deictic

Relying on communicative context.

Polysemy

Multiple related meanings.

Prototypes

Concepts defined by attributes; instances have more attributes closer to the prototype.

Iconicity

Form of a linguistic unit suggests its meaning.

Compositionality

Meaning of a combination is the sum of its parts' meanings.

Language family

Languages developed from a common ancestor.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

Proto-language for Indo-European family.

Eurasia

Northern/central Asia; similarities due to contact.

Common features of Eurasian languages

SOV order, agglutination, heavy suffixation, rich case marking.

Uralic

Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian.

Turkic

Turkish.

Features of the Indian linguistic area

Postpositions and retroflex consonants.

MSEA features

Tone, reduplication, infixes, circumfixes, classifiers, serial verb constructions.

Papunesia

New Guinea and surrounding islands; linguistically diverse.

Papuan

Indigenous non-Austronesian languages.