ANTH 231 EXAM 2

Language: system of communication, consisting of words used in a structured way and conveyed by speech, writing or gesture

Anthropology: study of humankind

Linguistic anthropology: analyzing the structure and patterning of language, but goes further than linguistics as it looks at the context and meanings in how it’s used, language and form and structure (introduced by Boas)

Formal/theoretical linguistics: synonymous with each other; focused, specific and intuitive (‘think theoretical mathematics/discrete), emapsizes deep analysis of formal linguistic structures, rules and objective study of language (language form vs culture)

Language change: shifts in the language that can manifest in fast or slow ways, internally or externally motivated, geographically or socially limited, values; as long as people are using the language, it will change

External change: due to contact with another language; borrowing is primary means of this change (language contacts/foreign words are borrowed and possibly fully incorporated); examples are garage (French), tomato (Nahuatl) and Bach (German); reanalysis

Internal change: speakers gradually adjust their language use over time (slower than external, can be changes lexically, morphologically, syntactically or phonologically); examples are prevalence of neutral pronouns in daily usage, use of you or ye instead of the previous thou or thee; misanalysis; great vowel shift (old to modern English) or Midwestern or California vowel shift

Historical linguistics: traces ancestral relationships among languages → reconstruction initially based on contemporary languages, focus on systematic phonological change, reconstruction of ‘proto-languages’

Proto-language: hypothetical ancient parent language (reconstructed through comparisons of words (cognates prove ancestral relation) in related languages and assigning possible ‘rules’)

Proto-language sound reconstruction: sorting out and working only with cognates (words that are in related languages showing common descent that have similar sound and meanings) and lining them up by correspondence sets (sounds that correspond with each other in the languages) then guess at the ancestral sound

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Language variation: caused by language change; correlates to geography (regional dialiects), class, race/ethicity, gender/sex, age, other identities

Regional variation: variations in accents that are caused by different regional areas of occupation; significant geographic divides and correlation with local identities

Dialect: specific variety or subdivision of a language, mutually intelligible way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular group of people

Language attitudes: popular opinions, judgements or prejudices towards languages/dialects and their speakers; also regarding perceived linguistic differences.

Standard language: official dialect or variety = language

Social variation: variations across sociocultural boundaries including broader patterns of division and stratification along these lines; relates to impact of language attitudes that certain social groups are devalued because of their variety of language

Linguistic inequality: prejudice in which people hold implicit bias about others based on their language variety (relates to social variation and linguistic attitudes)

African American Language: also called BVE, AAVE, AAE, AAL; ethnolect spoken by AAs since advent of slavery in North America; creolization, result of social isolation/exclusion, reflects patterns of segration and solidarity

Phonology → g-dropping, deletion, transposition of consonants, southern

accents, pin-pen

Grammar → absence of is/are, habitual be, is/was on 2nd person, been for

present tense, completive done, absence of 3rd person present tense and

possessive -s (and use of plural possessiveness), ain’t, double negatives and

reserved subject-verb

Non-standard grammar: non-standard dialects/varieties = dialect, differs from standard grammar (AAL morphology and syntax)

Code-switching: regular use of more than one language in social interactions (2+ languages of competence)

Style-shifting: code-switching between 2+ varieties/registers (slang, formal/informal, communicative competence)

Situational switching: ^above methods of switching, between interactions based on the situation or competence of interlocutors (‘home’ language/variety that differs from school/work variety, friends/family that are monolingual in a different language)

Metaphorical switching: within an interaction based on the topic being discussed (talking about weekend plans vs academic topics from class, quoting a speech vs real/imagined)

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Intrasentential switching: when more than one language is used within a single sentence (extremely constrained by competencies and grammar)

Bi-/multilingualism: acquiring/using 2+ languages from childhood/natively (more common outside of the US)

Diglossia: co-presence of ‘high’ and ‘low’ varieties of the same language → official/standar variety and colloquial/vernacular varieties (differs from bilingualism as it involves different varieties of same language)

Stable multilingualism: multilingualism persists through many generations as 1+ language may have official status

Transitional multilingualism: new generations of speaker slowly favor the new dominant/official language over their heritage languages

Assimilation: integration of immigrants into a new society; paired with language loss

Language Loss → gradual abandonment of heritage language

(complete is after 3 generations)

Accommodation: tendency to speak more like the people you are interacting with (causing force in language loss and change); extremely affected by language attitude

Pidgin: ‘contact languages’; sustained language contact results in development of mixed variety → limited vocab and simplified and variable grammar; extremely functional in facilitating socioeconomic interactions between languages

Creole: a pidgin that is acquired natively, thus equaling a new language → stablized and systemic grammar and expanded vocab; 2+ languages mixing all linguistic components

Hawaiian Creole English: called ‘Pidgin’, but is a creole language → derived from the pidgin language to communicate between contact languages of people from Portugal, China, Japan, Korea, Philippines and more when working on sugar planations (1835); first Pidgin was Pidgin Hawaiian, then dominance of English in 1875, HPE solidifying in last years of 1800s; HPE taught as first language and is now a creole, or HCE

Cantonese and Portugese most affects structure, pronunciations are Hawaiian, Cantonese and

Portugese (who had white advantage), Japanese, Portuguese, blended and English composes the larger portion of HCE

Creolization Hypothesis: Relates to AAL as a creole because of the relation of English and West African grammar structures being meshed → messy as exposure was 200+ years and 10s of African languages melding (hard to prove because of this as it is more accurately can be considered a pidgin for the first decades)

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Human language: spoken communication between humans characterized by: complex/variable grammar, social interaction/transmission, infinitive creative potential

Design features:

vocal-auditory channel(speaking and hearing as key features),

broadcast/directional transmission and reception(sounds are sent in all directions but listeners perceive from a specific direction),

rapid fading(language signals are temporary),

interchangeability(send and receive same signal/repeat w/o limits),

total feedback(hear themselves speak),

specialization (communication and physiology; transmit information and biologically specialized for language),

semanticity(specific sound = specific meaning, salt = salt),

arbitrariness(no connection between signal and meaning),

discreteness(units for communication can separate into unmistakably distinct units),

displacement(speak about things that are not present),

productivity(produce and comprehend entirely new utterances),

traditional transmission(learned in social groups),

and duality of patterning(important, combo of discrete and productive = all levels of discrete units build to higher levels to produce meaningful and new utterances; last feature)

Sub-systems of human linguistic behavior (and how it manifests in primates):

pragmatic(meaning-producing being who is speaking the language, intentional stance, understanding of reference and category; controversy in imitation),

conceptual(specification of ‘unspoken’, propositions about categories and logical relations that follow, can only assume for chimps because of their limited phonological abilities but they can extend spontaneous meaning and orders/sorting for conceptual structure, partial overlap with humans in exploration of concepts),

phonological(physical realization of speech → gesture or speech; biology doesn’t allow for this capacity but have taught to use ASL or lexigrams, ‘maybe duality of patterning’ instead of phonological but satisfactory),

syntactic(recognition of structural relations of morphemes to conveyed meaning; parts of speech and their ‘cases’, evident in word order patterns = syntactic competence but these are not categorical/‘cases’ and lack of linguistic gestures; possibly credit with protolanguage that are comprehensive but chimps may not ever have syntactic explosion),

discourse(utterances are organized in different types of sequences → lists, stories, conversation; more present is order of what is new, calling for action, more this than syntax)

Communication: broadly = sending of signals, narrowly = sending and receiving signals, possibly responded to; limited in what it can transmit, language is a medium for communication to thrive

Language acquisition: (human); symbolic communication = conventional → socially learned and agreed-upon meanings; theories about how children acquire language

Innatist(born hard-wired for grammar, discounted theory), behaviorist(stimulus and praise required), cognitivist(grasping concepts and language together), *theory(children = linguistic theorists, testing and refining understandings)

Non-human primates & language: focus on emotion, location and warning; lack of sub-systems but can learn some linguistic signs while competency is debated

Not language in grammar or abstract function ways, but communicative and social knowledge-sharing; can acquire to some extent and communicate to humans w/ human language (yes, savage no, hill); learn signs and elements of language but do not use the same way → no creative potential, possibly imitation

Constrained physiologically (consonant and soft palate, vowel and vocal tract/larynx, sub-glottal air control differs for different sounds)

Critical Period Hypothesis: ‘critical period’ for complete and fluent acquisition of language (small children learn easily and cut-off is around puberty); possible to learn a language later but difficult acquisition; sometimes impossible if never exposed to another language earlier in life