English 214 Final

What is the importance of "ax" versus "ask"

People have prejudice towards others who pronounce the word "incorrectly". It is an example of metathesis (process of sound change) and relates to how sounds change overtime.

In old english both versions of this word were actually used.

signifier

linguistic form, the string of sounds

signified

real-world object or abstract idea, concept to which signifier refers

linguistic sign

a meaningful word, signifier plus the signified

langue (language)

system of interrelated signs

parole

refers to the actual speech that speakers produce

difference between human language and animal communications

ability to acquire language in speech communities, unique words, ambiguity (multiple meanings per word), infinitely creative

internal factors of language change

those inherent to the structure, especially the sound structure of the language

social factors of language change

those that depend on the behavior of speech communities

cognitive factors of language change

those that depend on our comprehension of the language and our mind's language processes

"language mavens" or "language authorities"

English teachers, editors, journalists, columnists on language, and authors/editors of dictionaries, grammar and usage books, style guides

standard English

the variety most widely accepted and understood within an English-speaking country or throughout the English-speaking world (defined by Oxford Companion to the English Language)

where does language change tend to occur first

in speech

prescriptive grammar

a set of rules designed to give instructions regarding the socially embedded notion of the "correct" or "proper" way to speak or write

descriptive grammar

describes a language - the way that people use it - w/out judging whether the utterance is correct or incorrect

Characteristics of spoken language

allows more variation than written language, this language is more immediate and is easier to fix mistakes in

why is spoken language considered primary

these languages exist without written forms, language users acquire this language more naturally

What was the first dictionary and who wrote it

American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster

corpus linguistics

A linguistic research method based on the quantitative analysis of collections of naturally occurring language data, usually very large.

hypercorrection

an attempt to be overly "correct" resulting in the production of language different from the standard ("between Harlan and I" instead of "between Harlan and me")

phonetics

is a subdiscipline of linguistics which studies speech sounds; more generally, how sounds are produced and how they are perceived.

Phonology

is a subdiscipline of linguistics which studies the sound system of any given language. It examines which sounds make up the distinctive consonants and vowels of a language.

stops

a consonant made by a complete block of airflow followed by a release of air

fricatives

a consonant produced by bringing the active and passive articulators close together, creating friction as the air passes

affricates

combination of stop and fricative

three distinct features that categorize vowels

tenseness/laxness, height, frontness/backness

tenseness/laxness

indicates whether the tongue muscle is tense (and nearer the periphery of the mouth) or lax (and more centralized)

natural class

It is a set of sounds that share features in such a way as to include all sounds in the set and to exclude all others.

complementary distribution

refers to the systematic organization of allophones such that no two allophones of the same phoneme occur in exactly the same environment.

minimal pairs

a pair of words differentiated by only one feature of one sound, which proves that the feature in question is phonemic in that language.

ex. 'bat' and 'pat' or 'main' and 'mean'

assimilation

describe the ways in which a sound becomes more similar to surrounding sounds.

In English, most examples of this involve consonants. The primary motivation of this is ease of articulation: it is easier to articulate two consecutive sounds if they share features such as place/manner of articulation or voicing

insertion

a process in which sounds are added to words, most obviously when an affix (e.g., a prefix or suffix) is added.

metathesis

Metathesis describes the process of sounds reversing their order.

ex. Old English brid becoming bird

formants

A spectrogram provides a visual image of the acoustic signal when we speak. On a spectrogram, there are dark horizontal bands that represent the resonances in the vocal tract. What are these bands called?

Morphology

study of units of meaning involved in word formation

closed class words

conjunctions, pronouns (of all kinds), auxiliary verbs (e.g., may, can), determiners (e.g., the, a), prepositions (e.g., in, for), and inflectional suffixes (see below).

open class words

nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, made up words

allomorphs

Some open-class and closed-class morphemes have two or more phonological realizations or forms, which are variants of one morpheme. What are these called?

inflectional morphemes

affixes that can be added to a morpheme without changing its part of speech/suffixes

derivational morphemes

affixes that can be added to a morpheme to change its meaning and may change its part of speech

combining

the most productive way to form new words

Alphabetism/Initialism

When a word is formed from the initials of a phrase and the word is pronounced as the resulting sequence of letters

ex. URL - universal resource locator

acronymy

Sometimes groups of words are shortened to initials and then pronounced as though the initials were merely letters in a typical word

clipping

A new word created by shortening an existing one, e.g. phone.

Backformation

the process of reducing a word such as a noun to a shorter version and using it as a new word such as a verb (e.g. babysit from babysitter)

Syntax

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

Open class lexical categories

nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs

six grammatical categories of english verbs

person (first, second, third), number (singular and plural), tense, aspect, voice, and mood.

imperative

the mood of a verb that gives an order

indicative

mood of the verb that states a fact or asks a question

subjunctive

relating to or denoting a mood of verbs expressing what is imagined or wished or possible.

what distinguishes particles from prepositions

A combination of a verb and particle makes a phrasal verb, which has a different meaning from the meaning of the verb alone.

epistemic modal auxiliary verbs

used to indicate that the proposition underlying a statement is simply the case or is believed to be the case

universal grammar

the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements of properties of all human languages

dependent (subordinate) clauses

cannot stand alone, doesn't express a complete thought, used as adjective, adverbs and nouns

compound sentence

a sentence with two or more coordinate independent clauses, often joined by one or more conjunctions

complex sentence

A sentence with one independent clause and at least one dependent clause

restrictive clause

clauses that specify the referent of the noun or noun phrase that they modify.

non-restrictive clause

provides additional information about the noun or noun phrase it modifies but does not work to specify or restrict the referent

complementizer clauses

dependent clauses that fill an NP position. Therefore, they are sometimes called nominal clauses.

transformation

processes that change "underlying" sentences (which adhere to phrase structure rules) to "surface" realizations (which are systematically related to the underlying structures but whose structures do not adhere to phrase struc- ture rules).

gerund phrase

form constructed with the suffix -ing that functions as a NOUN, as in "Reading is fundamental!"

four stages of standardization

selection, codification, elaboration, and acceptance

polysemy

one word carrying multiple historically related meanings

hyponymy

denotes a set of hierarchical semantic relationships

meronymy

which figures in the relation of whole to part: tail, whiskers, paw, ears, and snout all represent parts of a dog (well, most dogs—some Welsh Corgi, for example, lack tails), and so stand in a subordinate semantic relationship to the word dog.

homonymy

words of radically different meaning that share a word form: either the same spelling, or the same pronunciation, or both.

metaphorical extension

a word takes on a metaphorical sense, reaching beyond its primary meaning

specialization

a word with a general meaning becomes a word of a more specific meaning

pejoration

a word of neutral significance takes on a negative meaning

reappropriation

a historically derogatory word is claimed/reclaimed by a community that has been oppressed or stigmatized by that word

perlocutionary act

the effect achieved by an utterance on the hearer.

illocutionary act

the intended meaning of the utterance or the conventional force that an utterance is understood to have.

locutionary act

the production of the sounds and words that make up an utterance and its referential meaning.

performative speech acts

are utterances that accomplish the acts they describe just by

being uttered

ex. placing a bet

maxims of quantity

Make your contribution as informative as required

Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

maxims of quality

-do not say what you believe to be false

-do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

maxims of relation

be relevant

maxims of manner

avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be brief, be orderly

negative politeness

DISCOURSE Social behavior which avoids imposing on others. Achieved by saying please or acknowledging imposition and then apologizing.

politeness

a crucial force in many interactions and speakers often shape their speech to respect the face-wants of interlocutors, depending on the power dynamics and cultural norms involved.

frontal lobe

responsible for some language and some motor functions

parietal lobe

responsible for sensations such as pain, temperature, and touch

occipital lobe

responsible for vision

temporal lobe

responsible for hearing and aspects of memory

Features of parentese

lengthened vowels, slower rate of speech, more limited vocabulary, exaggerated intonation

Critical Age Hypothesis

the ability to acquire language flawlessly decreases sharply after puberty; referred to extensively by the Chomskyan school as evidence that the ability to learn language is innately specified

broca's aphasia

halted speech pattern, speaker has difficulty speaking in sentences

wernike's aphasia

by and large, a fluent speech, but it may not make sense to the listener

dyslexia

deficits that impair a person's ability to understand a written language

transitive

verbs appearing with a direct object