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41 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
What do linguists specialize in?
A linguist specializes in determining language rules that people use to communicate.
What is psycholinguistic the study of?
Psycholinguistics is the study of how people acquire and process language.
What is sociolinguistics the study of?
Sociolinguistics is the study of language, cultural, and situational influences that focus on caregiver-child interactions as well as early social uses of language.
What could be a definition of speech?
Speech is a verbal means of communication that requires very precise neuromuscular coordination. Speech involves components such as vocal quality, intonation, and rate which are used to enhance the meaning of the message being verbally communicated.
How could the term language be defined?
Language is a socially shared code that represents concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols and rule-governed combinations for thought and communication.
What is a dialect?
A dialect is a subcategory using similar rules, not identical, to that of its parent language.
How does language change as society changes?
Different languages evolve and change naturally. Blending two languages, adding new words, as well as flourishing or dwindling languages develop primarily from strong cultural and religious ties that are agreed upon. Although society embraces many languages, there is an increased need to converse in one language: English.
What are the five parameters that describe language?
The five parameters are phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
How is language learned?
Language is learned by the intervention of biological, cognitive, psychological, and environmental factors.
What are some of the human interactions that associate with effective language use?
Factors such as nonverbal cues, motivation, and sociocultural roles associate with effective language use.
What is meant by the socially shared code of language?
This universally shared code of language allows the listener and speaker or writer and reader to exchange information transmitted and encode or decode automatically.
What is the process of communication?
It is a process that participants use to exchange information and ideas, needs and desires.
What does the process of communication involve?
Communication involves encoding, transmitting and decoding.
What is considered to be communication competence?
Communication competence is the degree to which a speaker is successful in communicating, measured by the appropriateness and effectiveness of the message.
What is meant by the term paralinguistic code?
This code is superimposed on speech to signal attitude or emotion. Paralinguistic codes include intonation, stress or emphasis, speech or rate of delivery, and pause or hesitation.
What does intonation mean?
Intonation is the use of pitch. It is also the most complex of all paralinguistic codes because it is used to signal the mood of an utterance.
What does stress imply?
Stress emphasizes words within a sentence giving the sentence a more personalized prediction. Stress also aids in memory retrieval and comprehension.
Why are paralinguistic mechanisms associated with suprasegmental devices?
Suprasegmental devices can change the form and meaning of a sentence by acting across elements of a sentence. Paralinguistic mechanisms change the meaning of a sentence as well.
What is considered a nonlinguistic cue?
Nonlinguistic cues include gestures, body posture, facial expression, eye contact, head and body movement, and physical distance.
What are metalinguistic cues?
Metalinguistic cues signal the status of transmission or success of communication.
21 What is the purpose of language?
The purpose of language serves as the code for transmission between people.
What does the term grammars mean?
Grammars are nonarbitrary organizational features of language that demonstrate the presence of underlying rules that occur repeatedly.
How would you describe a language user's linguistic competence?
Linguistic competence is a language user's underlying knowledge about the system of rules.
What is linguistic performance?
Linguistic performance occurs when linguistic knowledge is put into use.
Syntax includes what rules?
The rules of syntax govern the form of a sentence. Syntax also specifies which word combinations are acceptable and which are not.
26 What two phrases are needed to make a complete sentence?
A complete sentence is constructed by a noun phrase and a verb phase.
What is morphology?
Morphology is concerned with the internal organization of words.
What is a morpheme?
A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit that is indivisible without violating the meaning or producing meaningless units. An example could be the word dog.
What is a free morpheme?
Free morphemes are independent units that can stand alone and form words or parts of words. An example of a free morpheme could be the word toy or big.
What are bound morphemes?
Bound morphemes are grammatical markers that cannot function independently. Examples of bound morphemes are the markers s and est. These markers have to be attached to either a free morpheme or another bound morpheme.
What is phonology?
Phonology is primarily concerned with the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables.
How is a phoneme defined?
A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of sound that can signal a difference in meaning.
How are phonemes classified?
Phonemes are classified by their acoustic properties, how they are produced and their place of articulation.
What does the term semantics mean?
This term refers to an individual's autobiographical and experiential understanding and memory of particular events.
What is word knowledge considered to be?
Word knowledge is primarily verbal and contains word and symbol definitions.
What are semantic features?
Semantic features are aspects of the meaning that characterize a word. An example of a semantic features is the word mother. Mother implies both the words parent and women.
What is a synonym?
Synonyms are words that have almost identical features. An example could be the words talk and speak.
What is an antonym?
Antonyms are words that differ only in their opposite values of a single important feature. An example could be the words light and dark
Why would sentence meaning be more important than individual word meanings?
Sentence meaning represents an overall greater meaning than the sum of separate individual words.
How is pragmatics described?
Pragmatics is a set of rules that are concerned with the way language is used to communicate rather than with the way language is structured.
What is a speech act?
A speech act is considered to be every speech utterance. Each speech act needs to include appropriate persons and circumstances, be complete and correctly executed, and contain the appropriate intentions of all participants.