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LING 001 - Exam 1
Linguistics
104
Other
Undergraduate 1
09/24/2010

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Term
acronyms
Definition
LASER = light amplification...
RADAR = radio...
SCUBA = self contained underwater...
- classified as words if they are said as words (ex. A.S.A.P is not a word, but asap is). A method of word coinage.
Term
adpositions
Definition
the all encompassing name for prepositions and post-positions
Term
affective meaning
Definition
when the way in which you express a word or a phrase changes its meaning ("get out of here")
Term
affix
Definition
a morpheme or series of morphemes added to the end of a word which changes its tense, meaning, or grammar.
Term
agglutination
Definition
the process of joining several morphemes together in one word to produce a more complex meaning.
Term
agreement
Definition
subject-verb
Term
analytic vs. synthetic
Definition
analytic = word order is crucial (chinese)
synthetic = word order is important (zapotec)
Term
anaphor
Definition
an instance of an expression referring to another (ex: the monkey took the banana and ate IT)
Term
antecedent
Definition
a word, phrase, or clause, usually a substantive, that is replaced by a pronoun (anaphor) or other substitute later, or occasionally earlier.
Term
antonymy
Definition
the relationship between words of opposite meaning (binary: dead/alive)(gradable: hot/cold - warm, cool, etc).
Term
arbitrariness
Definition
df - indicates that the form of a word does not necessarily reflect its meaning (names for objects).
Term
ASL
Definition
American Sign Language
Term
aspect
Definition
action complete v. action continuing (habitual v. punctual).
Term
Auslan
Definition
Australian Sign Language - closely related to BSL.
Term
avoidance style
Definition
A style of speaking used in some societies which must be used in the presence of certain people (commonly in-laws: "mother in law style"), characterized by the use of vocabulary different from every day speaking.
Term
back-formations
Definition
television came before televise, editor before edit, enthusiasm before enthuse.
Term
basic color terms
Definition
the small number of color terms in each language which are not derived from other color terms and do not denote varieties of other colors (ex: black, red, white, blue = basic and reddish, violet, yellow-green = not basic).
Term
binary antonyms
Definition
dead/alive - antonyms which do not denote a scale (must be one or the other).
Term
blends
Definition
motel (motor hotel), smog (smoke and fog), brunch (breakfast and lunch).
Term
BSL
Definition
British Sign Language
Term
case
Definition
determines the function of the noun.
1. nominative - subject (doer) of verb (FATHER arrives)
2. accusative - object (receiver) of verb (I saw FATHER)
3. dative - ind. obj. of v. (give the book to FATHER)
4. genitive - possessive (FATHER'S book)
5. ablative - movement from, cause (for FATHER)
6. vocative - an addressee (FATHER, may I?)
7. locative - location
8. instrumental - object used for action
Term
categories of grammar
Definition
1. gender (noun class)
2. case
3. adpositions
4. agreement
5. mood
6. evidentials
7. aspect
8. manner
Term
Charles Hockett
Definition
(1960) proposed a set of 13 features which define human language.
Term
Clever Hans effect
Definition
horse that was claimed to have been able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks, but which was really watching the reactions of his human handlers for signals.
Term
clippings
Definition
fax (facsimile), bike (bicycle), math (mathematics).
Term
coinage
Definition
methods and manners of changing words or introducing new ones to common culture.
Term
compounding
Definition
bittersweet, rainbow, homework, notebook.
Term
connotation
Definition
the meaning suggested by the use of certain words beyond the dictionary definition.
Term
Continuity theory
Definition
the belief that primitive communication, such as songbirds, honeybees and chimpanzees, will eventually lead to full-fledged human communication.
Term
creativity
Definition
open-endedness.
Term
cultural transmission
Definition
df - language is learned through exposure (at a young age) and not through genetic means (Genie was never able to develop much language because she was deprived of it during the critical period).
Term
denotation
Definition
the dictionary definition of a word, with no further suggestion.
Term
derivational
Definition
the process of changing a word via an adposition which changes its MEANING (ex: write / writer / writing).
Term
design features
Definition
1. duality of patterning
2. arbitrariness
3. cultural transmission
4. displacement
5. creativity
6. stimulus freedom
7. structural dependency
Term
Discontinuity theory
Definition
the idea that humans retain a basic set of animal cries (screams, etc.) but that they exist alongside of human language and do not point to the evolution of language from themselves.
Term
displacement
Definition
df - the ability to reference things which are not immediately present physically or temporally (the past, a chair that used to be by the door).
Term
duality of patterning
Definition
df - using a limited number of meaningless elements to create a large number of meaningful elements (phonemes).
Term
gender
Definition
a grammatical category found in some languages which divides all nouns into two or more classes, though the classification may not be predictable from its meaning
Term
gradable antonyms
Definition
antonyms which are not "either, or" - hot/cold; warm, cool, etc.
Term
grammar
Definition
the way language combines words into sentences (categories of grammar)
Term
homo loquens
Definition
an alternate name for "human" proposed by Jean Aitchison meaning "the speaking man".
Term
hyponymy
Definition
the relationship between two words, one of which denotes a particular kind of what the other denotes. A lily is a particular kind of flower, so "lily" is a hyponym of "flower" while "flower" is a subordinate of "lily".
Term
iconicity
Definition
NOT a df - the form of a word denotes its meaning (onomatopoeia)
Term
inflectional
Definition
variations in words which change the grammar of the word (ex: girl / girls)
Term
Langacker’s Rule
Definition
"An anaphor may not both precede and command its antecedent"
Term
language
Definition
a system of arbitrary symbols by means of which a social group cooperates (Bloch and Trager)
-this definition excludes the written word, gesture, etc. as well as meaningless language ("bless you") and the changes in language ("facebook" = verb)
-Design Features of Language
Term
larynx
Definition
the structure in the vocal tract near the bottom of the pharynx which contains the vocal folds.
Term
lexical categories
Definition
a part of speech (noun, verb, preposition) into which most of the words of a language are divided.
Term
lexical semantics
Definition
the branch of linguistics which studies the meaning of words and more particularly the ways in which some word meanings are related to others.
Term
linguistic determinism
Definition
Sapir-Whorf : the "strong" reading - idea that humans are restricted to thinking only in the categories provided by our grammar (langauge DETERMINES thought).
Term
linguistic relativity
Definition
Sapir-Whorf : the "weak" reading - the idea that our culture, by means of language affects the way we think (language INFLUENCES thought).
Term
linguistics
Definition
the study of the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, syntax, etc.
Term
manner
Definition
the "how" of the verb - I chopped down the tree (chopped indicates with an axe; in English, manner is lexically attached to the verb).
Term
metaphor
Definition
a figure of speech in which something is identified indirectly by taking advantage of a perceived resemblance.
Term
metaphorical extensions
Definition
"mouse" "climate-gate"
the use of commonly understood metaphors to alter the meaning of a word or to create a new one.
Term
mood
Definition
-certainty of the utterace
-express necessity
-subjunctive
-evidentials
(mostly periphrastic or intonation based in English).
Term
morpheme
Definition
the most basic meaningful element of a word.
Term
morphology
Definition
theoretical lingusitics: studies the internal structure of words and relationships among words.
Term
Neo Sapir-Whorf
Definition
a new version of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis which provides a weaker reading than before.
Term
noun class
Definition
similar to gender - provides for more than two categories.
Term
nouns
Definition
a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action
the word class that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or in apposition
Term
number
Definition
the grammatical category which correlates more obviously with the number of distinguishable entities in the world (dog, dogs in English, one, two, three and many in Arabic)
Term
onomatopoeia
Definition
words which represent a non-linguistic sound by means of the nouns and consonants of the language (meow, splash, thud) - iconic.
Term
open vs. closed class
Definition
closed class: a word class to which no new items can normally be added, and that usually contains a relatively small number of items. Typical closed classes found in many languages are adpositions (prepositions and postpositions), determiners, conjunctions, and pronouns.
open class: a word class that accepts the addition of new items, through such processes as compounding, derivation, coining, borrowing, etc. Typical open word classes are nouns, verbs and adjectives.
Term
open-endedness
Definition
df - the ability to create infinite and brand new utterances (creativity, productivity).
Term
parameters of a sign
Definition
palm orientation, hand shape, location, facial expression, and movement (while some signs are iconic, many of them are completely arbitrary
Term
part of speech
Definition
one of the traditional categories of words intended to reflect their functions in a grammatical context
Term
periphrastic
Definition
a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme (typically one or more function words modifying a content word), instead of being shown by inflection or derivation.
"most beautiful" = periphrastic
"loveliest" = non periphrastic
Term
pharynx
Definition
the long part of the vocal tract which connects the windpipe and the esophagus to the mouth and nasal cavity and appears to be essential in producing speech sounds, though its unusual design leaves us vulnerable to choking on our food (while other mammals have evolved a structure which protects their windpipe but limits their speech sounds).
Term
phonaesthesia
Definition
the use of certain sound sequences to represent certain types of meanings - /sl-/ indicates wetness or sliperiness (slush, slime, slip, etc).
Term
phoneme
Definition
the most basic component of a word.
map = /m/,/a/,/p/
Term
phonetics
Definition
the study of speech sounds.
Term
phonology
Definition
theoretical lingusitics: studies the structure and systematic patterning of sounds
Term
postpositions
Definition
morphemes added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning.
Term
prepositions
Definition
morphemes added to the end of a word to change its meaning.
Term
Principle of Compositionality
Definition
a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme (typically one or more function words modifying a content word), instead of being shown by inflection or derivation.
The principle of compositionality states that in a meaningful sentence, if the lexical parts are taken out of the sentence, what remains will be the rules of composition.
Term
Principle of Effability
Definition
the principle that anything which can be expressed in one language can be expressed in another (everything can be translated).
Term
pronouns
Definition
a function word that is used in place of a noun or noun phrase
Term
prototype theory
Definition
the concept that humans have one word which is the perfect match for a category (chair is more frequently used than stool when discussing furniture).
Term
register
Definition
a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, an English speaker may adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g. "walking", not "walkin'"), choose more formal words (e.g. father vs. dad, child vs. kid, etc.), and refrain from using the word ain't when speaking in a formal setting, but the same person could violate all of these prescriptions in an informal setting.
Term
root
Definition
the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.
Term
rule vs. opinion
Definition
grammatical rules are those concepts which follow an innate structure and meaning which loses its meaning without the rule. grammatical opinions are practiced norms which maintain the intended meaning.
Term
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Definition
the hypothesis that the structure of our language in some way determines the way we perceive the world (weak -> strong).
Term
semantics
Definition
theoretical lingusitics: studies meaning, reference, truth and related notions.
Term
sense vs. reference
Definition
sense: the meaning of a word or phrase distinguished from other meanings.
"president" = leader of an organization
reference: the meaning of a word or phrase expressed by virtue of its context.
"president" at PSU = Graham Spanier
Term
sign language
Definition
the use of the hands and body to communicate using a highly complex and accepted form and structure, of which there are different forms and dialects in different countries and regions.
-SVO, contains verbal "aspect" (ing) via repetition.
Term
social meaning
Definition
identifies something about the speaker such as race, ethnicity, origin or social class.
Term
sound symbolism
Definition
any kind of direct relation between the sound of a word and its meaning (onomatopoeia and phonaesthesia).
Term
stereotype theory
Definition
a mental picture of the most typical example of something - a stereotype bird with which we compare prospective birds to determine their classification.
Term
stimulus-bound
Definition
NOT a df - opposite of stimulus freedom: animals cannot sound a warning call without the presence of a danger.
Term
stimulus-freedom
Definition
df - not bound to context (technically, the ability to say whatever you want in a given situation: "do I look fat in this?")(the ability to lie).
Term
structural dependency
Definition
df - language involves a highly organized system for constructing well-formed sentences.
Term
synonymy
Definition
the relationship between two words whose meanings are identical, apart perhaps from differences in style or association (bucket/pail, rabbit/bunny).
Term
syntax
Definition
theoretical lingusitics: studies the internal structure of sentences and the relationship among their component parts.
Term
Tamarian
Definition
the language used in "Darmok" which hinges on the use of metaphors which suit the situation based on myth and shared experiences. Cannot be translated using a "universal transmitter" since, while the words are translated, the meaning is impossible to understand without the background.
Term
tense
Definition
the grammaticalization of time which indicates the time of an event in relation to some moment in time.
Term
verbs
Definition
action words
Term
vocal tract
Definition
everything in the anatomy which is involved in producing speech (diaphragm, lungs, ribs, larynx, supralaryngeal vocal tract).
Term
word
Definition
no accepted definition exists for a word, but they can be defined linguistically (meaning, structure, order), phonologically (system of sounds and sound patterns) and morphologically (morphemes, word roots) and semantically.
Term
word class
Definition
a linguistic category of words (or more precisely lexical items), which is generally defined by the syntactic or morphological behaviour of the lexical item in question.
Term
word order
Definition
SVO - English, Spanish, German
SOV - Japanese, Navajo, Korean (MOST COMMON)
VSO - Arabic, Celtic
VOS, OVS, OSV
Term
tabula
Definition
"tab": the location in the sign space where the sign is made
Term
designator
Definition
"dez": the active hand configuration used to make the sign
Term
signation
Definition
"sig": the action of the active hand
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