Linguistics 101 Terms Part 2
Terms
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- Argot
- The way of speaking, the jargon of a particular group of people
- Lexical gaps
- Words that obey all phonotactic constraints, yet aren't real words (e.g. yulp, sarpishes, bandertactics, etc.)
- Onset
- The initial sound or sounds in a syllable, preceding the nucleus
- Motherese/Child Directed Speech
- Another way of saying baby talk
- Voiceless consonants
- Consonants in which air flow is not blocked in the glottis, no vibrations
- Approximates
- Sounds in which there is almost friction, but not quite
- Glides
- The sounds j, in French, and w: produced with little obstruction and an abundance of smooth gliding
- Distinctive features
- Features that differentiate between the phonemes
- Fundamental difference
- Between L1 and L2 acquisition there is a...
- Minimal pair
- Two words that are identical except for one sound, revealing which phonemes are semantically significant
- Phone
- A particular version of a phoneme
- Aspirated consonant
- A voiceless consonant that comes with a small puff from the glottis, a puff of air
- Palatal consonants
- Consonants articulated with the palate
- Prosodic features
- Features that are altogether in addition to all articulatory and voicing features; these features include stress, tone, and pitch
- Proto-Germanic
- English, Dutch, and German all stem from...
- Conditioned sound change
- Sound change that occurs in such a way as to take phonetic context into account
- Etymology
- The history of words
- Anteriors
- A subcategory of the consonantals: includes all sounds formulated forward from the palate (not including the palate)
- Obstruents
- A major category of sounds: sounds in which the airstream is either totally, or significantly, blocked (includes stops and fricatives)
- Sudden language death
- Language death that occurs in one generation, usually when all the speakers of a language are terminated
- Verner's law
- A law explaining why the sounds /p/, /t/, and /k/ don't always become /f/, /θ/, and /x/
- Gradual language death
- The most common form of language death
- Glottis
- The place where air passes through the vocal cords: the deepest part of the speech mechanism
- Allomorph
- A variant sound for a morpheme
- Coda
- The end section of a syllable
- Metathesis
- A phenomenon whereby two sounds are switched in location in a word
- Imitation, Analogy, and Reinforcement
- Two theories of language acquisition that fail to fully explain how children learn language
- Comparative construction
- The controversial way by which protolanguages can be reconstructed by means of comparison of their children
- Cooperative principals
- Principals speakers keep in order to ensure listeners understand them
- Innateness Hypothesis
- A hypothesis created by Noam Chomsky that states that language is acquired by children because they have the UG innately within themselves
- Articulatory phonetics
- The study of phonetics as it relates to the mouth, tongue, etc.
- Alveolar Consonants
- Consonants articulated with the alveolar ridge behind the teeth
- Protolanguage
- An ancient ancestor of current languages
- Lingua Franca
- A language that serves as a super-language, a language everyone understands in a certain context
- Lexifier language
- The language of base for creating a Pidgin
- Separate Systems Hypothesis
- The theory which is the opposite of the unitary systems hypothesis
- Syllabic sounds
- Sounds that can function as the core of a syllable
- Babbling
- The first stage in language acquisition: in this stage babies speak the syllables basic to human language
- Standard American English
- The dialect of English spoken by radio announcers and news anchors
- Nasal cavity
- The inner workings of the nose
- Nasal sounds
- Sounds formed when the uvula doesn't restrict air from entering the nasal cavity
- Historical Comparative Linguistics
- The study of linguistics with a view to history
- Pharynx
- The part of the throat above the glottis and the voice box
- Grimm's law
- An observation made by one Jakob Grimm stating that certain regular differences between Germanic languages and other Indo-European languages must have occurred during the development of Germanic
- Interdental consonants
- Consonants articulated with the teeth
- Analytic Approach to learning language
- One of the two ways of learning a language: in this way the learner is given material to compare and translate and thus learn the language by means of analysis
- Nondistinctive features
- Features that do not constitute a sound a unique phoneme
- Loan translation
- A word that is loaned, but also translated (e.g. perros calientes, a Spanish translated loan of hot dog)
- Affricates
- Sounds formed by a stop and then a slow release (tch, for example)
- Consonantals
- A major category of sounds: it comprises all sounds that are "very consonant-like," includes all consonants except the glides
- Thematic roles
- The roles played by NPs and VPs in a sentence
- Register tone
- A tone that covers the entire syllable
- Ease of articulation rule
- A rule whereby sounds in languages often change for the easier
- Diphthong
- A sound formed with a vowel and a glide (written as two vowels)
- Hypercorrections
- Corrections that are incorrect (e.g. pronouncing the t in often)
- Intonation languages
- Languages in which tone is not essential (such as English; Chinese is the opposite)
- Dissimilation rule
- A rule whereby adjacent sounds become less similar to improve clarity
- Accent
- A regional difference in pronunciation
- Nostratic
- A proposed uber-protolanguage, the mother of all languages (controversial in linguistic fields)
- Epenthesis
- The phenomenon whereby vowels or consonants—sounds—are inserted into a word
- Indo-European
- Farsi, Hindi, Latin, and Greek all stem from...
- Natural Classes
- A group of sounds that shares certain features
- Sonorants
- The opposite of obstruent: a major category of sounds
- Unitary System Hypothesis
- The theory that says children learning two languages at once (bilingual language acquisition) initially construct only one internal grammar (e.g. Padre, give me some leche please!)
- Taboo
- Words or actions that are frowned-upon are...
- Phonetics
- The study of speech sounds
- The Great Vowel Shift
- An event in the history of English that took place between 1400 and 1600, giving birth to modern English
- Comparative method
- The basic element in comparative construction
- Polyglot
- A person who speaks several languages
- Discourse
- A group of sentences
- Pidgin
- A simple, cobbled-together language used in contact between two peoples which becomes a full-fledged language if learned by babies
- Liquids
- Sounds in which there is some, but not much, obstruction of the air stream
- Allophone
- The phones of a phoneme
- Glottal consonants
- Consonants articulated with the glottis
- Radical language death
- Language death that occurs in one generation, not by killing but by the quick adoption of another language, often at gunpoint (e.g. the Russian empire invading Poland)
- Labials
- A subcategory of the consonantals: includes the bilabials and labiodentals
- Sibilants
- A subcategory of the consonantals: sounds involving much friction
- Poverty of the Stimulus
- The main evidence for the Innateness Hypothesis
- Unconditioned sound change
- Sound changes that occur in such a way as to run roughshod over the phonetic context
- Rime
- The nucleus and coda of a syllable put together
- Phonetic alphabet
- The opposite of an orthography
- Vowels
- Sounds produced with almost no blockage to the air stream
- Consonant
- A sound produced with blockage to the airstream
- Contour tone
- A tone that does not cover the entire syllable
- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
- The original and classic alphabet
- Supersegmental features
- Another way of saying prosodic features
- Coronals
- A subcategory of the consonantals: includes all sounds formulated with the lifting of the tongue
- Oral cavity
- The mouth
- Vocal tract
- The entire speech mechanism, including the oral cavity, the pharynx, and the larynx and vocal cords
- Cognate
- A word with a loan history (celebration, celebracion, celebrazione)
- Analogic change
- Change in a language that occurs when a common rule is is used to morph irregular forms into regular ones (e.g. changing "went" to "goed")
- Phonotactic constraints
- The limitations on what sort of sounds you can create in your language
- Telegraphic speech
- One of the middle stages of language development: in this stage the child patches words together without any grammar or inflection (e.g. Daddy take car out)
- Overgeneralization
- A mistake children make while learning language: they take words to mean more than they do, or overextend grammatical rules
- Assimilation rule
- The rule whereby a vowel makes neighboring sounds more like it
- Alveolar ridge
- A ridge directly behind the upper teeth, after the palate
- Dialect
- The peculiar way a particular group or region speaks a language
- Complementary distribution
- A position that proves two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme
- Dialect leveling
- The phenomenon whereby dialects lose their distinctness and meld together
- Lateral liquid
- L
- The palate
- The roof of the mouth directly above the tongue
- Code-switching
- The phenomenon whereby a person who knows two languages switches between his languages in the same sentence for contextual or social reasons
- Flaps
- Sounds with a quasi-trill, such as the Italian word "formaggio," or the Spanish word "Pero"
- Phonology
- The study of sound-patterns
- Stops
- Sounds in which, for several milliseconds, the airstream is blocked
- Sound shift
- A phenomenon whereby one sound morphs into another during a certain period of time (e.g. the great English vowel shift)
- Bilabial consonants
- Consonants articulated with the lips
- Neo-Grammarians
- A group of young linguists who claimed that linguistics is perfect science and that there are no exceptions to the laws
- Holophrastic Stage
- The second stage of language acquisition: in this stage the child speaks one-word sentences
- Downdrift
- Going down in tone
- Oral sounds
- Sounds formed when the uvula blocks the nasal cavity
- Impoverished data
- Data that are too poor for the child to correctly create a grammar
- Systematic ways
- Dialects differ in...
- Euphemism
- A soft way of saying something disturbing
- Homorganic nasal rule
- A rule that says nasal vowels will come with nasal consonants and vice versa
- Larynx
- The voice box containing the glottis
- Fossilized errors
- Errors in L2 acquisition that become so engrained that they cannot be corrected
- Idiolect
- The particular, idiosyncratic way one particular person speaks his language
- Prestige dialect
- The dialect considered desirable and respectable
- Genetically related
- German and English, Italian and Spanish, Finnish and Hungarian are all...
- Triphthong
- An imaginary, hypothetical sound involving two vowel sounds and a glide
- Loan words
- Word loaned from one language to another
- African American English
- AAE
- Velar consonants
- Consonants articulated with the velum
- Monophthong
- The opposite of a diphthong
- Uvula
- The fleshy glob in the back of the mouth, used by some languages (French) to produce sounds
- Place of articulation
- The place where consonants are formed
- Fricatives
- Sounds in which the airstream is not stopped, but is so close to being stopped that friction is produced (x, th, etc.)
- Case endings
- The basic elements of declension
- Trills
- Sounds produced with a trilling
- Bottom-to-top language death
- Language death in which the commoners stop speaking it and it is preserved only in certain, often scholastic or ecclesiastical, contexts (e.g. Latin)
- Declension
- The structure of case endings on the end of nouns (used in Latin, Old English, and Russian)
- Retroflex liquid
- Rib Cage
- Acoustic phonetics
- The study of phonetics as it relates to sound waves in the air
- Vowel formation criteria
- 1. Highness or lowness; 2. How far forward or backward the tongue is; 3. Roundness of the lips
- Optimality theory
- The theory that constraints are in a ranked system, and that the higher the rank, the more the constraint constrains a language
- Continuants
- The opposite of stops
- Velum
- The soft palate upwards from the uvula and downwards from the palate
- Social dialects
- Dialects based not upon region but upon socioeconomic status
- Orthography
- The opposite of a phonetic alphabet
- Auditory phonetics
- The study of phonetics as it relates to the ear mechanism
- Phonetic feature
- A feature of a sound, such as voiced or voiceless, labial or dental, etc.
- Phoneme
- A basic unit of sound having semantic significance, usually having one or more allomorphs
- Isogloss
- A dialect area
- Creole
- A mature, fully-linguistic development of a pidgin
- Synthetic Approach to learning language
- One of the two ways to learn a language: in this way the learner systematically learns the rules and lexicon of a language
- Manner of articulation
- The phenomenon that determines how and whether airflow is blocked in the formation of consonants (it's another way of classifying consonants)
- Unaspirated consonant
- A voiceless consonant that does not come with a puff of air from the glottis
- Voiced consonants
- Consonants in which air flow is blocked in the glottis, vibrations