Year 10 English Language: Spoken Texts, Context, Morphology, and Lexicology

Comprehensive review flashcards covering prosodic features, connected speech processes, MSFACT contextual factors, morphological structure, and word classes.

What does the linguistic term 'prosody' literally mean?

Prosody means 'above the words'.

What are the five key prosodic features evaluated in spoken texts?

Volume, Pitch, Intonation, Stress, and Tempo.

In spoken discourse, what can a fast tempo indicate?

It can indicate heightened emotions such as fear, excitement, or anxiety, show hurry, or mark parenthetical (by the way) statements during storytelling when information is less important.

What can a slow tempo indicate in spoken discourse?

It can indicate a subdued emotional state like relaxedness, hesitation, caution, or be used to create emphasis.

How is pitch defined in phonetics and phonology?

Pitch refers to the 'height' of a sound in auditory terms, ranging from high to low.

What is intonation?

Intonation refers to the rising and falling of vocal pitch during a discourse.

What prosodic feature is defined as the degree of strength used to produce a syllable?

Stress, which is marked by pitch movement, greater amplitude (volume), and greater duration (length).

What is the connected speech process known as elision?

Elision is the omission of sounds from words in relaxed or informal settings, which can also result in combining words (e.g., 'going to' becoming 'gonna' or 'fish and chips' becoming 'fish \'n\' chips').

What is vowel reduction in connected speech?

Vowel reduction occurs when a vowel sound is pronounced in a relaxed way as a 'schwa' sound (phonetically sounding like 'uh').

What is assimilation in connected speech?

Assimilation occurs when a sound changes to sound more like a neighbouring sound, such as 't' changing to 'd' in 'bitter' becoming 'bidder' or 'can\'t you' becoming 'canchu'.

What is insertion in connected speech?

Insertion is the addition of extra consonant or vowel sounds into words for ease of pronunciation, such as pronouncing 'athlete' as 'ath-a-lete' or 'drawing' as 'draw-r-ing'.

What elements make up the Year 10 acronym MSFACT for text analysis?

Mode, Situational Context, Function, Audience, Cultural Context, and Text Type.

What are the three primary modes or systems of communication?

Spoken, written, and signed.

How is digital communication classified in terms of language mode?

Digital communication is not classified as its own mode; instead, it is classified as speech (such as video, Skype, or FaceTime) or writing (such as social media posts) in an online setting.

What three main factors make up Tenor in situational context?

Social distance (how well participants know one another), Solidarity (shared goals, experiences, and values), and Hierarchy (social role/power).

In situational context, what is Field?

Field refers to the broad subject or content of a discourse that determines the lexemes used.

What are the six text functions identified in Roman Jakobson's linguistic framework for the VCE Study Design?

Referential, Emotive, Conative, Phatic, Metalinguistic, and Poetic.

What is the function of a Conative discourse?

To prompt the addressee to do something, such as through commands (e.g., 'Sit down!').

What is a morpheme?

A morpheme is a unit of meaning that words can be broken into, serving as the smallest unit found in a word.

What is a lexeme?

A lexeme is a single unit of meaning, which can exist as single words, phrases, or compound words.

What is an infix, and what example is provided in the lecture notes?

An infix is a rare affix that splits a root morpheme in two and inserts itself inside the word; an example is 'bloody' in 'Abso-bloody-lutely!'.

What is inflection in morphology?

Inflection means adding morphemes to show grammatical information (such as tense, number, possession, or comparison) without changing the word class or basic meaning.

What are the eight inflectional morphemes in English listed in the material?

Adjective comparative ($\text{-er}$), adjective superlative ($\text{-est}$), verb 3rd person singular present ($\text{-s}$), verb simple past tense ($\text{-ed}$), verb past participle ($\text{-en}$), verb continuous participle ($\text{-ing}$), noun possessive marker ($\text{-'s}$), and noun plural ($\text{-s}$).

What is derivation in morphology?

Derivation means deriving new forms of words and adding to or modifying their function (word class) or meaning by adding morphemes.

What is compounding?

Compounding is the process of combining two root morphemes into a whole new expression, such as joining 'black' and 'board' to form 'blackboard'.

What is the difference between bound morphemes and free morphemes?

Bound morphemes (such as affixes) cannot stand alone as independent words, whereas free morphemes (such as root morphemes) can stand alone as words on their own.

What is the difference between content words and function words?

Content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) carry semantic information and core meaning, whereas function words (determiners, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, interjections) provide specific grammatical information about how words connect.

What are collective nouns?

Nouns that appear singular in form but refer to a group or plural subject, such as 'swarm', 'murder', 'family', or 'police'.

What are the three base auxiliary verbs in English?

'be', 'have', and 'do'.

What is a modal verb?

An auxiliary verb used before a lexical verb to convey attitudes and moods regarding the likelihood or status of an event, such as ability, intention, necessity, permission, prediction, or possibility (e.g., could, should, would, can, may).

How do regular verbs form their past tense compared to irregular verbs?

Regular verbs form their past tense by adding the inflectional suffix $\text{-ed}$ (e.g., jumped), whereas irregular verbs form their past tense in various ways that typically involve changing the stem of the word (e.g., drive becomes drove).

What positional test can be used to identify adverbs of manner in a sentence?

Adverbs of manner can usually be moved to different positions in a sentence while the sentence continues to make grammatical sense (e.g., 'walked unenthusiastically', 'unenthusiastically walked', 'Unenthusiastically, the students walked').

What is a preposition?

A function word that tells direction or position, or establishes links between lexemes and phrases (e.g., in, at, by, with, behind, of, to).

What are determiners?

Function words (articles) that modify noun phrases to define whether they are definite ('the') or indefinite ('a' / 'an').