Linguistic Anthropology Lecture Notes

These flashcards cover key concepts from the lecture on Linguistic Anthropology, focusing on foundational elements of language, key scholars and theories, and linguistic structures.

Language

A system of communication unique to humans that allows abstract and symbolic thought.

Signs

Sound or visual symbols that stand for things, ideas, or feelings.

Arbitrariness

The characteristic of language where there is no natural link between sound and meaning.

Critical period hypothesis

The theory that after puberty, full native acquisition of language is much harder.

Langue

Ferdinand de Saussure's term for the abstract system of a language.

Parole

Ferdinand de Saussure's term for actual speech.

Universal Grammar (UG)

Noam Chomsky's proposal that all human languages share an innate biological capacity for learning grammar.

Phonology

The study of sound systems in language.

Phoneme

The smallest sound unit that changes meaning.

Allophone

A context-based variation of a phoneme.

Communicative competence

Knowing how to use language appropriately in social contexts.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in a language.

Free morphemes

Morphemes that can stand alone as words.

Bound morphemes

Morphemes that must attach to others to convey meaning.

Derivational morphemes

Bound morphemes that change the word class.

Inflectional morphemes

Bound morphemes that mark grammatical information.

Syntax

The set of rules for combining words into phrases and sentences.

Etic

Outsider, objective analysis of all possible sounds in language.

Emic

Insider perspective that focuses only on meaningful contrasts within a language.

Semantics

The study of meaning in language.

Pragmatics

The study of how context influences the interpretation of meaning.

Displacement

The ability of language to refer to things, ideas, or events that are not present in the immediate context.

Productivity

The ability to create and understand an infinite number of new utterances using a finite set of linguistic elements.

Recursion

The ability to embed phrases or sentences within other phrases or sentences, allowing for complex structures.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The theory that language influences or determines a person's thoughts and perceptions of reality.

Sociolinguistics

The study of the relationship between language and society, including how social factors influence language use.

Dialect

A particular form of a language specific to a region or social group, often differing in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

Accent

A distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class.

Idiolect

The speech habits peculiar to a particular individual.

Code-switching

The practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation.