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Linguistics
Final Exam
144
Other
Undergraduate 1
08/03/2013

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Term
Assimilation
Definition
Two sounds are involved, and one becomes more like the other.
Term
The word input is sometimes pronounced ['ɪmpʊt]. In this word, /n/ has assimilated to /p/.
Definition
Example of Assimilation
Term
Dissimilation
Definition
Two sounds are involved, and one becomes less like the other.
Term
Deletion
Definition
A sound is removed from to a word
Term
Example. The final /b/ sound has been elided from the word thumb.
Definition
Example of Deletion
Term
The English phoneme /p/ is a voiceless bilabial stop. If you say Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers as fast as you can, chances are you dissimilate one or more /p/'s by pronouncing them as an /f/.
Definition
Example of Dissimilation
Term
Lenition
Definition
A sound is weakened. This weakening often happens adjacent to less restricted sounds like vowels or fricatives.
Term
Types of lenition
Definition
Opening , Sonorization
Term
Fortition
Definition
A sound is strengthened. Strengthening turns a less restricted sound (like an approximant or a fricative) into a more restricted one (like an affricate or a stop).
Term
Example. The Spanish stop /d/ is lenited to a fricative [ð] between vowels: dados 'dice' is pronounced /daðos/. Most speakers glide past this middle [ð] with even less restricted airflow: [dað̞os]. Some speakers take the lenition a step further by omitting [ð] entirely: [daos].
Definition
Type of Lenition
Term
Example. The "y-sound" /j/ in you is fortified to an affricate /dʒ/ in the colloquial pronunciation did ya? ['dɪʔdʒə].
Definition
Example of Fortition
Term
Apheresis
Definition
(especially if vowel). Is the phoneme removed from the beginning of a word?

Example. Speakers may shorten about time to 'bout time.
Term
Syncope
Definition
Is the sound removed from the middle of a word?

Example. The Luiseño word hunwutumi 'the bears' is pronounced /hunwutmi/. Speakers syncopate the third /u/.
Term
Apocope
Definition
Is the phoneme removed from the end of a word?

Example. The word thumb lost its final /b/ over time.
Term
Voicing
Definition
If the assimilating phoneme is originally voiceless, does it pick up the feature +voice from the other sound?

Example. Nearly all vowels in human language are voiced. Some Italian speakers pronounce the phoneme /s/ between two vowels as /z/, like in /la 'mia 'kaza/ 'my house'. The change from /s/ to /z/ is an instance of intervocalic voicing.
Term
Devoicing
Definition
If the assimilating phoneme is voiced, does it pick up the feature -voice from the other sound?

Example. The word have ends in the voiced phoneme /v/. The word to begins with voiceless /t/. Some speakers devoice /v/ to /f/ when they pronounce the expression have to as hafta.
Term
Palatalization
Definition
Does the assimilating sound move its place of articulation closer to the palate? This happens when the sound it's assimilating to already has a palatal or near-palatal place of articulation. Significant triggers include the consonant /j/ ("y sound") and the vowel /i/ ("ee sound").
Term
Epenthesis
Definition
A sound is added to a word.
Term
Example. Some English speakers pronounce the word student as /'stʃju:dənt/. In rapid speech, the alveolar /t/ assimilates to the palatal /j/ and becomes palato-alveolar /tʃ/, resulting in the pronunciation /'stʃju:dənt/.
Definition
Example of Palatalization
Term
Fricativization
Definition
Does the assimilating sound change its manner of articulation so that the airflow is closer to a fricative? Less restricted sounds trigger this kind of change including fricatives and vowels. Stops (plosives) often undergo this assimilation.
Term
Example. The mispronunciation /ʔʌʔfθru:/ for up through fricativizes the plosive /p/ as it assimilates to the fricative /θ/.
Definition
Example of Fricativization
Term
labialization
Definition
when the assimilating sound becomes more labial
Term
velarization
Definition
when the assimilating sound becomes more velar
Term
Prothesis (or prosthesis)
Paragoge.
Anaptyxis (anaptyctic vowel)
Excrescence (excrescent consonant).
Definition
Types of Epenthesis
Term
Prothesis (or prosthesis).
Definition
Is the phoneme added to the beginning of a word?

Example. Sardinian speakers changed /roza/ 'rose' to /aroza/ by adding a prothetic /a/.
Term
Paragoge
Definition
Is the phoneme added to the end of a word?

Example. Ancient Greek speakers sometimes pronounced the word estí as estín, adding a paragogic /n/.
Term
Anaptyxis (anaptyctic vowel)
Definition
Is the additional sound a vowel?
Term
Excrescence (excrescent consonant)
Definition
Is the added sound a consonant?
Term
Opening.
Definition
Does the sound go from a stop to a fricative to an approximant?

Example. Tuscan Italian speakers soften /k/ to a fricative /h/: una Coca Cola comes out as /una hoha hola/.
Term
Sonorization
Definition
Does the sound go from voiceless to voiced, and then become progressively less restricted (from a stop to a fricative to an approximant)?

Example. The Spanish word /dados/ above was inherited from Latin /datos/. You can see a clear example of sonorization in this progression: /datos/ > /dados/ > /daðos/ > /dað̞os/ > /daos/.
Term
Compensatory lengthening
Definition
A consonant is deleted, but the preceding vowel is lengthened to make up for the loss.

Example. The Proto-Greek word *pods 'foot' eventually lost its /d/, but Ancient Greek speakers lengthened the vowel /o/ to compensate for the loss: /po:s/.
Term
Metathesis
Definition
Two or more sounds swap places.

Example. Vowel and consonant are switched in the pronunciation of nuclear as nucular. Similarly, Sardinian speakers say trau 'bull' instead of the expected *taru.
Term
Vowel harmony
Definition
One or more vowels become like another vowel within the same word. i-mutation or umlaut.

Example. The vowel /a/ in Proto-Germanic *manniz 'people' was raised & fronted to /e/ in men under the influence of the high front vowel /i/. This is both an example of umlaut and of vowel harmony more generally.
Term
Accent shift
Definition
The framework for assigning stress or pitch accent to vowels changes.

Example. Early Indo-European stressed different syllables in different words. However, Germanic languages like English have fixed the stress accent to the first syllable. Sanskrit and Greek accent the last syllable in pitá / patér, but the first in máta / méter; the English equivalents are fáther and móther.
Term
Apophony (ablaut, gradation)
Definition
Vowels shift to indicate different grammatical forms of the same word. This is not a historical sound change, it plays a part in a grammatical pattern.

Example. The vowel in the verb /spi:k/ ablauts to form the past tense /spo:k/.
Term
Chain shift
Definition
Multiple sounds move in an orderly fashion across one or more sound features. Initiated by a sound that either moves too close to another (pushing sounds away) or distances itself (pulling sounds closer).

Example. Early Modern English long vowels underwent the chain shift a: > e: > i: > ai, so that the word bathed came to be pronounced /be:ðd/, me as /mi:/, and so on.
Term
Sound laws
Definition
formalize and make explicit a regular sound change pattern in a language, or from parent to daughter languages across history. Key sound laws are named after their discoverers or popularizers (like Grimm's Law or Lachmann's Law). Laws may involve lenition, assimilation, or any of the above sound change types.
Term
Grimm's Law
Definition
defines a systematic sound change in Proto-Germanic. Part of Grimm's law involves devoicing of voiced stops, so that the Proto-Indo-European root *gwen- turned into *kwen- 'woman', and the root *doru- became *trew- 'tree'. We can write the rule as: C [+plosive +voice] > C [+plosive -voice]
Term
feeding order
Definition
When an earlier rule creates an environment in which a later rule can operate, the two rules have a relationship.
Term
Example. In the previous example, rule #1, which deleted /i/, allowed rule #2 (changing /m/ > /n/) to apply.
Definition
Example of Feeding Order
Term
counterfeeding order
Definition
When the rules are reversed - the earlier rule abandoning an environment which is filled by the later rule - the result is a
Term
Example. Imagine that, early in its history, our Language A had a rule that changed preconsonantal /m/ > 0. Language A inherited a proto-form *lámfi. Rule #1 ( m > 0 / V_C = /m/ deleted between a vowel and a consonant) applied to the proto-word, giving the expected output *láfi. Rule #2, which changed /n/ to /m/ before a labial consonant, produced the very result that was operated on by the first rule: /m/.
Definition
Example of Counter Feeding Order
Term
Bleeding Order
Definition
When an earlier rule creates an environment in which a later rule cannot operate, the two rules are in a ___________ Result: first rule applies, second does not.
Term
natural class of sounds
Definition
is a set of sounds in a language that share certain phonetic features.
Term
For example, the set containing the sounds /p/, /t/, and /k/ is a natural class in English, namely voiceless stops. This class contrasts with several other classes, such as the voiced stops, voiceless fricatives, sonorants, and vowels.
Definition
Examples of Natural Class of sounds.
Term
phoneme
Definition
or dialect is an abstraction of a speech sound or of a group of different sounds which are all perceived to have the same function by speakers of that language or dialect.
Term
For example, the English word "through" consists of three phonemes: the initial "th" sound, the "r" sound, and an "oo" vowel sound.
Definition
Example of Phoneme
Term
allophone
Definition
a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language.
Term
[p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/.
[t] and [tH] are allophones of the phoneme /t/.
Definition
Example of Allophone
Term
Apocope
Definition
Word final vowel deletes
Term
hiatus
Definition
two vowels against each other
Term
Catergorical Perception
Definition
is the perception of different sensory phenomena as being qualitatively, or categorically, different.
Term
Voice Onset Time: commonly abbreviated VOT
Definition
the length of time that passes between when a consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds begins
Term
morpheme
Definition
the smallest grammatical unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
Term
affix
Definition
a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word.
Term
Infix
Definition
affix that appears within a stem
example : Minne⟨flippin'⟩sota
Term
prefix
Definition
affix that appears before the stem
example : un-do
Term
suffix
Definition
affix that appears after them stem
example :look-ing
Term
circumfix
Definition
An affix that has..one portion appearing before the stem, the other after
example : en⟩light⟨en
Term
compound : "head"
Definition
The key word that determines the nature of a phrase (in contrast to any modifiers or determiners).

For example, in a noun phrase, the head (also known as the headword) is a noun or pronoun ("a tiny sandwich"). In an adjective phrase, the head is an adjective ("completely inadequate"). In an adverb phrase, the head is an adverb ("quite clearly").
Term
folk etymology
Definition
restructuring a word whose structure is opaque into something seemingly more transparent.
Term
It is about misunderstanding the whole thing. Like Bride-guma , bride groom
Asparagus - Sparrow Grass
Definition
Example of Folk Etymology
Term
Reanalysis
Definition
to impose a morpheme boundary where it is not there. Analyze the morphemic structure of the word.
Term
Bikini , monokini
minature , miniskirt
Definition
Examples of reanalysis
Term
hypercorrection
Definition
when a speaker deliberately tries to adjust his or her own speech in the direction of another variety perceived as amore prestigious but ' over shoots thr mark' by applying a adjustment too broadly.
Term
A Brittish speaker trying to acquire an american accent will insert R's into words and produce things like avocardo
Definition
Example of hypercorrection.
Term
umlaut
Definition
a sound change where a vowel was modified to conform more closely to the vowel in the next syllable
Term
contamination
Definition
an irregular change in the form of a word under the influence of another word.
Term
calque-ing
Definition
When you take a phrase in a foreign language and translate it to your own language using your own language's parameters.
Term
syn-with
pathia-suffering
synpathia - with suffering
ROMAN
com passio
German
Mit-leid Slavic
Definition
example of calque
Term
isolating language
Definition
a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio – in the extreme case of an isolating language words are composed of a single morpheme.
Such as : Vietnamese
Term
agglutinative language
Definition
a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together
such as Japanese
Term
inflecting language (fusional)
Definition
a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes to denote grammatical, syntactic or semantic change.
such as: Sanskrit, Russian, German, Icelandic, Polish, Croatian, Serbian, Slovak, Ukrainian, and Czech.
Term
polysynthetic language (incorporating) Languages
Definition
highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to stand alone). typically have long "sentence-words" such as the Yupik word tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq which means "He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer." The word consists of the morphemes tuntu-ssur-qatar-ni-ksaite-ngqiggte-uq with the meanings, reindeer-hunt-future-say-negation-again-third.person.singular.indicative, and except for the morpheme tuntu "reindeer", none of the other morphemes can appear in isolation.
such as: yupik
Term
relexification
Definition
the mechanism of language change by which one language replaces much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with that of another language, without drastic change to its grammar.
Such as : Hatian Creole
Term
Alignment
Definition
the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like the dog chased the cat, and the single argument of intransitive verbs like the cat ran away.
Term
Neogrammarian Hypothesis
Definition
A hypothesis about the regularity of sound change, which states that a diachronic sound change affects — without exception and simultaneously — all words in its environment.
The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first sound-change hypothesis to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability. Nowadays, it is considered as more of a guiding principle than a fact, because numerous examples of sound changes that affect only a few words at first and then gradually spread to other words have been attested to.
Term
Grimm's Law
Definition
It establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and the stop consonants of certain other centum Indo-European languages (Grimm used mostly Latin and Greek for illustration).

Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless stops.
Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced stops or fricatives (as allophones).
Term
bʰ → b → p → ɸ
dʰ → d → t → θ
gʰ → g → k → x
gʷʰ → gʷ → kʷ → xʷ
Definition
Grimm's Law Examples
Term
Verner's Law
Definition
a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, *s, *h (including *hʷ ), when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing and became respectively the fricatives *b, *d, *z, *g (and *gʷ).

(In Proto-Germanic, voiced fricatives *[v ð ɣ] were allophones of their corresponding voiced plosives *[b d ɡ] when they occurred between vowels, semivowels and liquids, so we write them here as *b, *d, *g. But the situations where Verner's law applied resulted in fricatives in these very circumstances, so we understand these phonemes as fricatives in this context.)
Term
(In Proto-Germanic, voiced fricatives *[β ð ɣ] were allophones of their corresponding voiced plosives *[b d ɡ] when they occurred between vowels, semivowels and liquids, so we write them here as *b, *d, *g. But the situations where Verner's law applied resulted in fricatives in these very circumstances, so we understand these phonemes as fricatives in this context.)
Definition
Verner Law Examples
Term
Isogloss
Definition
a line drawn on a dialect map to show boundaries.
example : the past tense of dive in the Eastern USA
Term
language family
Definition
a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy.
Term
Parent Language
Definition
a hypothetical, or reconstructed, typically extinct language from which a number of attested, or documented, known languages are believed to have descended by evolution, or slow modification of the proto-language into languages that form a language family.
Term
Sister Language
Definition
is a language descended from another language through a process of genetic descent.
Term
For example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Spanish. Likewise, Proto-Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages, is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, in the Elder Futhark. Although there are no very early Indo-Aryan inscriptions, the Indo-Aryan languages of modern India all go back to Vedic Sanskrit (or dialects very closely related to it), which has been preserved in texts accurately handed down by parallel oral and written traditions for many centuries.
Definition
Examples of Proto Lang etc
Term
language isolate
Definition
is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic") relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language.
Term
Some sources use the term "language isolate" to indicate a branch of a larger family with only one surviving daughter. For instance, Albanian, Armenian and Greek are commonly called Indo-European isolates. While part of the Indo-European family, they do not belong to any established branch (like the Romance, Indo-Iranian, Slavic or Germanic branches), but instead form independent branches of their own. Similarly, within the Romance languages, Sardinian is a relative isolate. However, without a qualifier, isolate is understood to be in the absolute sense.
Some languages became isolates after all their demonstrable relatives went extinct. The Pirahã language of Brazil is one such example, the last surviving member of the Mura family. Others, like Basque, have been isolates for as long as their existence has been documented.
Definition
Example of Language isolate
Term
Tree Model
Definition
a model of language change described by an analogy with the concept of family tree
Term
Tree model
Definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AustroAsiatic_tree_Peiros2004.png
Term
Wave Model
Definition
a model of language change in which a new language feature (innovation) or a new combination of language features spreads from a central region of origin in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water.
Term
isolates
Definition
single languages which do not appear to be related to anything at all.
Term
Iconicity
Definition
the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.
Term
"Nooooo!" The extra letters add length to the word, signifying that the word is stretched out when spoken.
Definition
Iconicity Example
Term
Watkins Law
Definition
To identify the common feature of all these developments and propose a principle of morphological change which is in evidence .
Term
Writing
Definition
a means of communication using symbols.
Term
Pictogram
Definition
an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object
Term
ideogram
Definition
a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept.
Term
logogram
Definition
a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (the smallest meaningful unit of language).
Term
syllabogram
Definition
signs used to write the syllables of a word.
Term
determinative
Definition
are words that express additional information such as definiteness, proximity, quantity, and relationships about a noun phrase or verb phrase in the form of a present participle.
Term
"Rebus" principle
Definition
using existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words
Term
Acrophony
Definition
is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the names of the letters α, β, γ, δ, are spelled with the respective letters: ἄλφα (alpha), βῆτα (beta), γάμμα (gamma), δέλτα (delta).
Term
Classification of Consonants
Short Answer
Definition
Dependent on whether they are voiced or not and where they are articulated in the mouth. (Handout)
Term
Classification of Vowels
Short Answer
Definition
Classified as Front Central or Back , then Close ,Close mid, open mid , and open vowels.(Handout)
Term
Phonetics vs phonology
Short Answer
Definition
Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken. Phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially different patterns of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds in different positions in words etc.
Term
Sound Change
Short Answer
Definition
any processes of language change that affect pronunciation (phonetic change) or sound system structures (phonological change).
An example is:t changed first into a voiceless dental fricative [θ] (like the initial consonant of English thin), which has yielded present-day [f].
t > θ > f
Term
Phonetic vs phonemic sound changes
Short Answer
Definition
Phonetics studies the actual sounds used by the speakers of a language, how people pronounce them etc.

Phonemics studies the phonemic structure of a language (or of a variety of a language).
According to one view a speaker of a languge uses a finite number of phonemes when speaking, but these may be pronounced differently in different contexts. We call these varieties allophones. In spanish for example b at the beginning of a word sound like a v to English people but in the middle of a word it is often more like a b for many speakers. There is a difference between the two sounds but they belong to the same phoneme as the difference is never used to distinguish two different words.
Term
Grammaticalization
Short Answer
Definition
a process by which words representing objects and actions (i.e. nouns and verbs) transform through sound change and language migration to become grammatical markers (affixes, prepositions, etc.). "the change whereby lexical terms and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions".[1] Simply said, grammaticalization is the process in which a lexical word or a word cluster loses some or all of its lexical meaning and starts to fulfil a more grammatical function. A well-known example of grammaticalization is that of the process in which the lexical cluster let us, for example in the sentence "let us go", is reduced to a single word let's as in the sentence "let's you and me fight". The phrase has lost its lexical meaning of "allow us" and has changed into an auxiliary, the pronoun 'us' reduced first to a suffix and then to an unanalyzed phoneme.
Term
Analogy
Short Answer
Definition
process that reduces word forms perceived as irregular by remaking them in the shape of more common forms that are governed by rules. For example, the English verb help once had the preterite holp and the past participle holpen.
Term
Leveling
Definition
morphological leveling is the generalization of an inflection across a paradigm or between words.[1] For example, the extension of the form is to persons such as I is and they is in some dialects of English is leveling, by analogy with a more frequent form, as is the reanalysis of English strong verbs as weak verbs, such as bode becoming bided or swoll becoming swelled. Another example is the way almost all the original English plural suffixes have disappeared, as a result of which there is only one general plural marker in contemporary English: -s.
the process by which structural variation in dialects is reduced
Term
Backformation
Definition
back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes.
For example : For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then backformed hundreds of years later from it by removing the ion suffix. This segmentation of resurrection into resurrect + ion was possible because English had examples of Latinate words in the form of verb and verb+-ion pairs, such as opine/opinion.
Term
Internal Reconstruction
short answer
Definition
a method of recovering information about a language's past from the characteristics of the language at a later date.
1.) We not that a certain pattern is visible in the language
2.) We note that some forms are exceptions to this pattern.
3.) We hypothesize that the exceptional forms originally conformed to the pattern.
4.) We posit an ancestral stage of the language with no exceptional forms.
We identify the changes that disrupted the original perfectly regular pattern and led to the introduction of exceptional cases.
Term
substratum language
Definition
In the case of French, for example, Latin is the superstrate and Gaulish the substrate.
Language made off of a dead language.
Term
Markedness
Definition
Languages usually have alternative constructions available for expressing ordinary and not-so-ordinary meanings.
A marked form : an unusual form used only in certain special circumstances.
Term
proportional (4-part) analogy
Definition
perscriptive grammar, regular sound change phonologically conditioned; A1 : B1 :: A2 : B2; or, A1 is to B1 as A2 is to B2
Term
Grassman's Law
Definition
dissimilation of aspirated stops in Sanskrit and Greek; if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration
Term
Verner's Law
Definition
in the Proto-Germanic language voiceless fricatives f, þ, s, h (including hʷ ), when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing and became respectively the fricatives b, d, z, g (and gʷ)
Term
Grimm's Law
Definition
voiceless stops go to fricative, voice to voiceless, aspirated to voiced in Germanic; establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and the stop consonants of certain other centum Indo-European languages
Term
analogical leveling
Definition
one category wins out over all the others; regularization within a paradigm (common in English with vowels)
Term
analogical extension
Definition
can introduce paradigmatic irregularity; from one paradigm to another; proportional analogy
Term
recipient language
Definition
a language which receives loan words from a donor language
Term
donor language
Definition
the language which a recipient language borrows loan words from
Term
basic vocabulary " Core Lexicon "
Definition
the types of words that are unlikely to be subject to borrowing: night, day, water, sky, sun, moon, etc.
Term
chain shift
Definition
one sound change touches off the sorts of shifts that occur in the rest of the language (like dominoes); happens to maximize vowel space, or when contrastive words shift sounds that get to similar, etc.
Term
hypercorrection
Definition
usage of pronunciation or linguistic rule that many informed users of a language consider incorrect, but that the speaker or writer uses through misunderstanding of prescriptive rules, often combined with a desire to seem formal or educate
Term
glottochronology
Definition
languages replace approximately 20% of their core lexicon over a 1000 year period, so we would expect languages that share approximately 80% of their vocabulary to have split around 1000 years ago; which words are core vocabulary, actual counting of forms that are cognate against those that are not cognate in basic vocabulary, we are not likely to know much about the proto-language, etc.
Term
lexical diffusion
Definition
a major mechanism in language change, with sound changes beginning in a relatively small number of words and later spreading to other words of the same basic phonological shape; the change is completed only when it has worked through the entire lexicon
Term
the comparative method
Definition
is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal development of a single language over time.[1] Ordinarily both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages, to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language, to discover the development of phonological, morphological, and other linguistic systems, and to confirm or refute hypothesized relationships between languages.
Term
Reanalysis and extension
Definition
a reinterpretation of a linguistic structure made possible by an ambiguous context; the original construction may continue to exist alongside its descendant, or may disappear entirely
Term
The comparative method
Definition
is used only when we have identified two or more languages sharing a common ancestor.
Term
The comparative method be applied to syntax.
Definition
No use reanalysis.
Term
Internal reconstruction example
Definition
German
1. Bund [bunt] ‘alliance’ Bunde [bunde] Pl.
2. bunt [bunt] ‘colourful’ bunte [bunte] Pl.
3. Rad [rat] ‘wheel’ Räder [räder] Pl.
4. Rat [rat]’advice’ Räte [räte] Pl.
Term
Reanalysis and extension in syntax
Definition
Reanalysis is the most important pathway of syntactic change. Reanalysis of sentence structure
Term
copula
Definition
grammatical item used to link two elements of a sentence
Term
glottochronology( swadesh assumptions)
Definition
assume that the rate of vocabulary replacement is rougly constant
We can assign a value to the rate of replacement , then we can calculate an absolute date for the separation of any two related languages.
word lists (200 & 100)
Term
problems with glottochronology
Definition
it is too simplicstic to assume that an ancestral language suddenly splits into two or more daughter which thereafter have no contact with each other
r (The constant) is not a constant at all. some languages unquestionably change their vocabularies faster than others.
Some armenian has no armenian words left within the language, while icelandic language has gone unchanged.
Term
Examples of Lexical diffusion
Definition
For example, in English, /uː/ has changed to /ʊ/ in good and hood but not in food; some dialects have it in hoof and roof but others do not; in flood and blood it happened early enough that the words were affected by the change of /ʊ/ to /ʌ/, which is now no longer productive.
Term
Language Internal and External
Definition
Language change is observed when a generation of speakers produces linguistic
expressions that differ from those of previous generations, either in form or in
distribution. Language change is explained when its causal forces are identified
and their interactions are made clear.
At least two components are essential for any causal theory of language change.
One component, long recognized by historical linguists, is a theory of language
acquisition by child learners: ultimately, language changes because learners acquire
different grammars from their parents. In addition, as children become parents,
their linguistic expressions constitute the acquisition evidence for the next
generation.The internal knowledge of UG determines the
space of languages that learners can attain, and the external linguistic experience
in the environment determines what language children do attain. Their interactions
over time, in turn determine the space of language
change.
Term
reanalysis..
Definition
a structural change without an observable change in
form;
Term
extension
Definition
an existing
alternation pattern is extended from a subset of the
lexicon to new words which used not to have it
Term
Can we predict analogical change?
Definition
are there natural tendencies/directionality in
analogical change?
Jerzy Kuryłowicz has formulated six "laws of
analogy" which supposedly govern the
application and direction of analogical changes
We cannot predict analogical change because these laws did not hold all the time. They don't account for many things. Random changes may also plague a language.
Term
The relevance for Tree drawing etc.
Definition
Shared innovations to show language contact. Shared retention to show language similarity , independent innovations to show language change.
Term
What qualifies as writing?
Definition
to qualify, a graphic system should…
…capture material components of a specific
language: segments (sounds), syllables, words, etc.
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