Linguistic
The scientific study of the language, how it is put together and how it functions. It looks at the interplay of sound (phonetic) and meaning
... [Show More] (semantics and pragmatics).
Phonetics
The Study of human speech sounds
Grammar
Influenced by both sound and meaning (Morphology, syntax, and phonology).
Pragmatics
The Study of the use of language in context... deals with how listeners arrive at intended meaning of speaking.
Phonology
The Branch of linguistics which studies how sounds are organized, and used in natural language.
Ex: time [t] & dime [d] Identical words, except beginning sounds.
Allophone
Phones which are phonetically similar but not the same and which are treated as the same in linguistic communication; or the sound which are phonetically different but do not make one word different from another in meaning.
Ex: pat, spin, cup
These are sounds that are perceptibly different but do not distinguish words.
P^h - Pat (aspirated)
P- Spin (not aspirated)
P^o- Cup (your lips remain closed; /p/ is unreleased)
Allophone
Is a set of multiple spoken sounds (or phones) used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, [p^h] (as in pin) and [p] (as in spin) are multiple spoken sounds for the phoneme /p/ in the English language. Although a phoneme's variation of spoken sounds are all alternative pronunciations for a phoneme, the specific alternative sound selected in a given situation is often predictable. Changing the alternative sounds used by native speakers for a given phoneme in a specific context usually will not change the meaning of a word but the results may sound non-native or unintelligible. Native speakers of a given language usually perceive one phoneme in their language as a single distinctive sound in that language and are "both unaware of and even shocked by "all the different variations used to pronounce single phonemes.
Morphology
The study of the structure of the words and how words are formed.
Morphemes
Minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided any further. There are two types.
Bound Morphemes
The smallest unit that has meaning but cannot stand alone. (A morpheme that must be attached to another morpheme and cannot stand alone.) Affix are often this type of morpheme. It also includes prefixes (added to the beginning of another morpheme), suffices (added to the end), infixes (inserted into other morphemes), and circumfixes (attached to another morpheme at the beginning and end)
Ex: o, as, a, amos, an (the ending of any grammatical change in a verb.
Free Morphemes
The smallest unit that has meaning and can stand alone. (or A morphene that does not need to be attached to another morpheme and can stand alone)
1) open class/ lexical/content
-verb, noun, adjective, and adverb.
2) closed class/function/grammatical
Ex. el, las, los, nos,vos
- Conjuctions, prepositons, articles, and pronouns
Derivational
These are added to morphemes to form entirely new words that may or may not be the same part of speech.
Ex.: Cloud, cloudy, happiness, greenish, establishment)
Inflectional
These are added to the end of an existing word for purely grammatical reasons, there are 8 in English. They do not alter the syntactic behavior of the word.
Ex. -ed past tense, -s plural, -ing progressive
Root
Morphemes ( and not affixes) that must be attached to another morpheme and do not have a meaning of their own.
Ex. -ceive in perceive
-mit in submit
Syntax
The study of sentence structure (grammar). How words are arranged to form sentences. Links sound patterns and meanings. Knowing the structure of a language entails knowing the rules of sentence formation in that language.
Semantics
The study of meaning and language. The analysis of the meaning of words, phrases, sentences. The way in which sounds and meanings are related. Studies the way in which language expressions have meaning.
Descriptive grammar
The structure of a language as it's actually used by speakers and writers. It represents the unconscious knowledge of a language. It does not teach the rules of a language, but rather describe rules that are already known.
Ex. Me likes apples. (incorrect)
I like apples. (correct)
Prescriptive grammar
The structure of a language as certain people think it should be used. It dictates what a speaker's grammar should be and they include teaching grammars, which are written to help their language.
Basic principles of Grammar
There are two types of grammars: descriptive and prescriptive.
Universal Grammar
The principles that contain the basics of all possible human language forms, which is the universal concepts and properties that are shared by all languages.
Productivity in Linguistics
The amount a native speaker uses a particular grammatical or syntactic process in their language. A reference to the extend that a given process is not bound in its application to a certain input. For instance the prefixation of re- to verbs in modern English is productive because this can be done with practically all verbs. The term also refers - in syntax- to the ability of speakers to produce an unlimited number of sentences using a limited set of structures.
Ex. re-think, re-do, re-write, re-use.
Productive Rule of Language
The property of the language-system which enables native speakers to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of utterances, including utterances that they have never previously encountered. One that works for more than one or two words or constructions in the language: in English and in French, pluralizing with some form of -s or -es.
Ex. the bosses, les haricots verts (the green beans).
This is a productive or regular rule.
Distinction Between Deep Structure & Surface Structure
Proposed by Chomsky in his Standard Theory of Transformational Grammar: Every sentence has 2 levels of structure, one which is obvious on the surface and another which is deep and abstract. These are related by a processes called Transformations.
Classification of language into families and branches
A set of languages deriving from common ancestor or "parent." Language with a significant number of common features in phonology, morphology and syntax are said to belong to the same language family. Subdivisions of a language family are called "branches."
Different perspectives on the study of language
Synchronic vs. Diachronic, how the system works at a point in time (synchronic) vs. how the language has changed over a period of time (diachronic).
Synchronic linguistics
Analysis of language at a single point in time.
Diachronic linguistics
Historical linguistics or the study of language change.
The different types of changes that languages undergo at all levels
Phonetic and phonological
morphological and syntactic
lexical and semantic
Mechanisms by which language change occurs
Umlaut, phonemic splits, mergers, borrowing, euphemisms, folk etymologies, metaphors and taboos
Utterances
Manner of speaking. Any speech sequence consisting of one or more words and preceded and followed by silence: it may be coextensive with a sentence.
A bit of spoken language. It could be anything from "Ugh!" to a full sentence. It means "to say." So when you're saying something, you're doing this. Saying "24" in math class is doing this. A police officer yelling "Stop!" is doing this. Saying "Good boy!" to your dog is this. Even a long speech by the President is this. If you can't hear it, it's not this..
Umlaut
The change of a vowel (as \ü\ to \ē\ in goose, geese) that is caused by partial assimilation to a succeeding sound or that occurs as a reflex of the former presence of a succeeding sound which has been lost or altered
Phonemic Merger
Where two (or more) phonemes merge and become indistinguishable. Ex. The 'cot-caught merger'... the sound change causes the vowel in caught, talk, and small to be pronounced like the vowel in cot, rock, and doll, so that cot and caught, for example, become homophones, and the two vowels merge into a single phoneme. The change does not affect a vowel followed by /r/, so barn and born remain distinct, and starring and warning do not rhyme.
Phonemic Split
A split in phonology is where a once identical phoneme diverges in different instances. In this case a phoneme at an early stage of the language is divided into two phonemes over time. Usually this happens when a phoneme has two allophones appearing in different environments, but sound change eliminates the distinction between the two environments.
Borrowing
When a word from one language that has been adapted for use in another.
Euphemisms
The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or something unpleasant; the expression so substituted using "eliminate" as another way to say "kill." Cougar for example is a woman who has reached mid-life, who is single, financially secure and on the lookout for relationships with younger men- as in "prey."
Folk Etymologies
In linguistics when a form of a word changes so that it better matches its popular rationalization. Typically this happens either to analyzable foreign words or to compounds where the word underlying one part of the compound becomes obsolete. Cockroach comes from the Spanish word cucaracha. As with woodchuck, the Spanish word was transformed into English by substituting similar-sounding morphemes: cock (as in rooster) and roach (which at that time was simply the name of a type of fish). There wasn't anything about cockroach that suggested "rooster" or "fish," of course; it's simply a matter of the sounds fitting. The same thing happened with the word polecat (from French poule chat, a cat that feeds on poultry) and ten-gallon hat (from Spanish galón, a braid), English speakers also mistook a napron for an apron, and even an ewt for a newt.
Metaphors
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
Ex. drowning in money; broadly: figurative language.
Taboos
Forbidden to profane use or contact because of what are held to be dangerous supernatural powers
Ex. 1)Sex is a taboo subject for many people.
2) In this company, dating a coworker is considered taboo.
Pragmatics
The study in linguistics of how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation which usually a conversation (hence conversation analysis). It distinguishes two intents or meanings in each utterance or communicative act of verbal communication. One is the informative intent or the sentence meaning, and the other the communicative intent or speaker meaning (Leech, 1983; Sperber and Wilson, 1986). The ability to comprehend and produce a communicative act is referred to as pragmatic competence (Krasper, 1997) which often includes one's knowledge about the social distance, social status between the speakers involved, the cultural knowledge such as politeness, and the linguistic knowledge explicit and implicit. [Show Less]