Linguistics Final

Sentence

groupings of words that work together to convey a message

Syntactic Theory

describe the principles that make sentences grammatical within a given language & across the world's languages

Ungrammatical

native speakers would judge this to be an unacceptable sentence of their language (descriptive, not prescriptive)

Expression/Utterance

one or more words, not necessarily grammatical

Agent (Subject)

the entity that performs the action

Patient (Object)

the entity that the action is being done to

Cross-linguistic word order

languages vary in their typical word order

Co-occurrence

how and when expressions can appear with other expressions in a sentence

Co-occurence agreement

words change their form in order to express syntactic features

Arguments

expression that must co-occur with other elements in a sentence to be grammatical

Adjuncts

expression that can co-occur with other elements for the sentence to be grammatical (optional)

Dummy/expletive pronoun

"it" that doesn't refer to anything specific

Pro-drop languages

a language where certain classes of pronouns can be omitted if inferable from the context

Hierarchical structure

sentences that are made up of smaller functional units (constituents)

Constituent

group of words that have functional utility

Lexical categories (parts of speech)

abstract classes of words; set of words that have the same distribution in sentences

Productivity

the ability to produce and understand novel forms

Recursion

when something is defined in terms of itself or when a syntactic structure can contain itself

Distribution

the set of environments an item appears in

Mental grammar

unconscious knowledge of how to productively combine forms in a language

Grammar

descriptions of that langauge

Mass nouns

usually items that cannot be counted, often substances

Count nouns

usually things that can be counted

Intransitive verb (ITV)

does not have an object, 0 args

Transitive verb (TV)

a verb that has a direct object (1 NP)

Ditransitive verb (DTV)

A verb that requires two objects to form a double-object construction (2 NP)

Sentential complement verb (SV)

needs a sentential complement to form a VP (believed, said)

Ambiguity

when a linguistic expression has more than one interpretation

Lexical ambiguity

ambiguity that arises due to uncertainty regarding which word/phoneme was intended

Homophone

morphemes that have the same phonological form but different meaning, POS, or functions

Structural ambiguity

ambiguity that arises due to uncertainty regarding which syntactic structure was intended

Undergenerate

when there are grammatical sentences of the language that it cannot produce

Overgenerate

when it produces ungrammatical sentences

Prototype Theory

a theory in which concepts or word meanings are formed around average or typical values; a concept is a single, summary representation

Exemplar theory

people make category judgments by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category

Lexical semantics

the study of word meaning

synonyms

many words, one meaning

Homophony/Polysemy

one word can have many meanings

Antonyms

words that have opposite meanings

Complementary antonyms

everything is either one or the other, or else is neither. ex: married/unmarried, alive/dead

gradable antonyms

represents points on a continuum

Reverse antonyms

one word in the pair suggests movement that "undoes" the movement suggested by the other- Left/right Inside/outside

Converse antonyms

for one to occur, the other must occur as well

Hypernym

a word that is more general than another (e.g. animal is a hypernym for horse, plant is a hypernym for flower)

Hyponym

a more specific word within a category or under a hypernym

Meronym

a whole-part relationship where X is a part of Y. eg wheel to car.

Holonym

the whole to which parts belong (example: dog for head, nose, paws, and tail)

Associationist Approach

we make senses of knowledge by how much associations we can made on concepts

Intuition

words that appear in similar contexts are likely to have similar meanings

Reference

the set of things an expression refers to in the world

Sense

the mental representation of a word's meaning

Principle of Compositionality

the meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its component parts and the manner in which they are arranged in syntactic structure

Non-compositionality

overall meaning is not a systematic meaning of its parts (idioms)

Set

order-less collection of entities

Intersective Adjectives

an adjective whose reference is determined independently from the reference of the noun that it modifies

Subsective adjective/Relative Intersective

reference is not fixed but determined by the references of the NP

Non-intersective adjectives

expression refers to individuals who may or may not be in the set referred to by the NP

Anti-intersective adjectives

adjectives that can't refer to the objects denoted by the noun (e.g. fake Picasso)

Propositions

things that have truth value & truth conditions

Semantics

the literal meaning of language without context

Pragmatics

the study of how we use language in context and how context contributes to meaning

Context-dependence

what a sentence means and what a sentence does depends on the context

Deictic terms

linguistic expressions that they themselves don't mean anything specific; their meaning is entirely dependent on the context in which they appear;

Linguistic context

what has been said earlier in the conversation

Extra-linguistic context

context outside of the language

Situation context

local environment of utterance

Social context

the relationships and norms of the social situation

Given Information

information that the listener already knows

New Information

information that is assumed to be unknown

Gricean Maxims

assumptions that we hold when we engage in conversation

Maxim of Quality

expectations of honesty in conversations

Maxim of Relevance

be relevant

Maxim of Quantity

don't say too much or too little

Maxim of Manner

avoid ambiguity and obscurity; be brief and orderly

Violating Maxims

speakers may violate a maxim or the cooperative

principle to further their own aims - done to cause misunderstanding

Flouting Maxims

to break one of Grice's maxims intentionally in order to convey a particular message that is often counter to or seemingly unrelated to what is actually said

Felicity

situational appropriateness; appropriate for the context & cooperative

Felicitous Utterances

situationally appropriate

Infelicitous Utterance

utterance is inappropriate

Inferences

A conclusion logically drawn from presented information; not directly stated

Entailment

facts that must also be true if a given proposition is true

Implicature

An implied meaning that has to be inferred as a result of a conversational maxim being broken (non-literal meaning of an utterance)

Performative Speech Acts

an action is performed while utterance is being said

Direct speech acts

utterance that performs its function in a direct and literal manner

Indirect speech acts

utterance that performs its function in an indirect and nonliteral manner

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

the language we use determines the way we understand the world

Strong Determinism

language determines our thoughts

Weak Determinism

language influences thought

Path languages

verb encodes the direction of an action

Manner languages

verb encodes how the action takes place

Rhoticity

whether a variety contains an /r/-like consonant in syllable coda position

Rhotic

contains /r/-

Non-rhotic

doesn't contain /r/-

Sociolinguistics

study of relationships between social and linguistic variation; study of language in its social context

Dialectology

Geographic variation in a language

Chain shift

occurs when the place of articulation of one vowel changes, causing the surrounding vowels in the quadrilateral to likewise shift in production

Social variation

the way we speak varies based on social factors

Speech style

linguistic variation linked to social identity

Time scales

geographic-based and identity-based pattern to language use are fairly stable over time