Linguistics 101

Etymology

(The study of) the origins and development of words

Why does language change?

-Language reflects what is going on with people -Interactions between groups of people will result in a language change (influence from the other languages) -Separating people (language isolation)

Relationship between dictionaries, standardization, and language authority

Dictionaries are given authority by speakers of the language and as a result, people believe that whatever the dictionary says is correct and everything else is incorrect, which leads to standardization of the language

Linguistic Features

Individual elements of a language, such as a word, phoneme, or morpheme

Linguistic (in)security

Linguistic Insecurity: The belief that one's own language is incorrect and/or stigmatized Linguistic Security: The belief that one's own language is correct and/or prestigious

How do we differentiate consonants?

Manner, Place, Voicing

Phonology

The study of sound systems of languages; there are rules that govern how phones are used; phones affect one another in speech

Phone

a speech sound

History and development of AAE

slave trade; language isolation; could not speak native tongue; were not taught to read and write English

Morpheme

smallest units that carry meaning

Semantics

study of meaning

Language and ethnicity

common dialect or language unites people of same ethnicity

Consonant vs Vowel

consonants are mostly articulated via closure or obstruction in the vocal tract; vowels are produced with a relatively free flow of air and are typically voiced

Lexical Rules

definition; rules stating which words can be used for constituents generated by phrase structure rules

Word Formation Processes

-Clipping- A process whereby a word is shortened to form a new word, e.g., meds from medications, doc from doctor -Borrowing- using terms, phrases from other languages e.g. pork and beef from French -Coinage- making an entirely new word like Jello -Compounding- joining two entire words to make one e.g. butterfly -Blending-combining two words e.g. smog -Acronym- an abbreviation from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word e.g. WTF, LOL

Grammatical vs Ungrammatical; Grammaticality judgments

-Grammatical: A word or phrase that adheres to the structure, or grammar, of a linguistic system -Ungrammatical: A word or phrase that does not adhere to the structure, or grammar, of a linguistic system -Grammaticality judgment: The determination by native speakers as to whether a form is grammatical or ungrammatical

General findings from Preston and Tamasi

-Preston: "draw map" draw and label dialect zones purpose was to see language attitudes mental map (correct and pleasant speech) people in the north sound more correct, but less pleasant whereas people in the south sound more pleasant, but less correct, correct is talking about status while pleasant stood for solidarity; snobs in the north and southern hick for south -Tamasi: "pile sort method"; manipulated Preston's methodology, answers were not limited to geographical barriers (could group Arizona and Georgia together)

Dates and names of the first key British settlements in North America

-Puritans to New England (1629-1641) -Cavaliers and their servants to Virginia (1642-1675) -Quakers and others to Pennsylvania (1675-1725) -Scots-Irish to Appalachia (1717-1775)

What are the major regional dialects of the US? Where do they exist, why are they hard to determine, and one or two distinctive features of each?

-South: bible belt; pin-pen merger, coke for carbonated drink, double motos (might could), perfective done (he done threw a fit), fixin' to or liketa -North: caught-cot merger, you guys as second plural, pop, bubbler for water fountain -Midland: merry, marry, and Mary distinction -West: clipping, card-cord merger; pro-predicate do (I slept in but shouldn't have done) -Alaskan/Hawaii: American languages Russian and French have been a big influence; in Hawaii English borrows heavily from Hawaiian language and Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Tagalog influence -Hard to determine because gradual change, don't know exact line/border

Linguistic Family Tree

-We use the model (and metaphor) of family trees to show how languages are connected to one another -Languages can develop directly from other languages but they can also be related to languages more distantly (such as English and Latin) -Not all languages come from Indo-European. In fact, most of the world's languages do not

Characteristics of Language

-language changes over time -a language will change differently in different places and among different groups of people

Four Principles of Linguistics

-languages are governed by rules -all languages are created equal -languages change -languages vary

Phonological Rules (Hint: 5 rules mentioned in class)

1. Nasalization-pronunciation of a sound with air flowing through the nose, typically before a nasal consonant 2. Deletion- subtraction of a morpheme; cents-->cent 3. Insertion- addition of a morpheme; science 4. Metathesis-two sounds are transposed; prescription & perscription 5. Flapping-a sound produced with the tongue tip briefly touching the alveolar ridge; little

Great Vowel Shift (when it occurred, what happened, a few examples of changes)

14th- 15th century; A set of English vowels-- the historically long vowels which are now mostly described as tense vowels--began to shift toward new pronunciations. Low vowels shifted to mid vowels; mid vowels shifted to high and high vowels underwent diphthongization.

Shibboleth

A linguistic feature that can be used to distinguish members of specific social groups

Observer's Paradox

A paradox that emerges when a field worker tries to get the most natural linguistic data from an informant by closely observing his or her speech in unnatural, controlled environments

Language Maven

A person who claims to be an authority on language, often by taking a prescriptive view of grammar

Northern Cities Shift

A process affecting the vowel system of American English associated with the speech of northern cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago

Southern Vowel Shift

elongated vowels (Matt instead of a like in apple --> it is e as in pet with a like apple together)

Dialect

A variety of language associated with a specific region or social group

Semantic Meaning: Conceptual vs Associative

Conceptual meaning: the basic components of meaning conveyed by the literal use of words (e.g. dictionary definition) Associative meaning: the type of meaning that people might connect with the use of words (e.g. needle="painful") that is not part of conceptual meaning

Are dictionaries descriptive or prescriptive?

Descriptive because it reflects the view of the people at the time

Basic settlement/migration history. Why are these histories important for understanding contemporary linguistic variation in the US?

East Anglians in New England and coastal South; Scots-Irish to Appalachia; West Country folk into North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia; everyone out West

Historical (external) and linguistic (internal) information: dates, events, and how they changed the English language

External: language contact (French and Indian War, English borrowed French terms)

Free vs Bound Morphemes

Free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand by itself as a single word Bound morpheme: a morpheme such as un- or -ed that cannot stand alone and must be attached to another form

Group exclusive vs Group preferential

Group exclusive: A feature that is used exclusively by one specific group of speakers Group preferential: A feature that is associated with a certain group or groups, despite its limited use by other speakers

Social Network Theory (high and low density networks)

High density network: A social network in which members of the network tend to know a large number of other members of the group Low density network: A social network in which members are linked to only a limited number of members; at its most extreme, members of a low-density network are linked to only the central member of the network and not to other members

Derivational vs Inflectional Morphemes

Inflectional Morpheme: modify a verb's tense or a noun's number without affecting the word's meaning or class (e.g. Derivational Morpheme: changes meaning or part of speech (e.g. if you were to add sub to the word marine, it completely changes the meaning of the word)

IPA

International Phonetic Alphabet; a single, unified system in which there is a consistent one-to-one relation between symbol and sound for most, if not all, of the speech sounds in all of the world's languages

Define 'isogloss' and what do they tell us about language?

Isogloss: A line on a map indicating differences in the geographic distributions of a linguistic feature, namely, that a feature tends to be used on one side of the line and not the other

How can AAE be both prestigious and stigmatized?

It can bring African Americans together, pride for the group; Stigmatized because AAE is seen as incorrect, looked down upon, for example, when looking to hire, if AAE is spoke, you are less likely to get hired because AAE is associated with lesser intelligence

What are some reasons why language change can slow down?

It can slow down because the group of people are isolated from other groups of people that speak the same language (Tangier Island)

Structure of AAE (lexical, phonological, grammatical, and discourse features)

Lexical: 'kitchen' for nape of neck, 'ashy' for dry skin Phonological: ask--> aks, brother-->brofer Grammatical: "She been not here"; deletion of plural and possessive -s & habitual be Discourse Items: strong oral tradition and sense of verbal play; prestige is given to those who are witty (preachers and educators for example) speaking was important because they were not able to learn how to write or read English

Linguistic Variables and Social Variables

Linguistic Variable: The option of two or more linguistic features that result in the same meaning

Low-Back (cot-caught) and pin-pen merger

Low-Back Merger: The merger of the low back vowel and the mid back vowel in some dialects of English, esp. Midland and Western American English Pin-Pen Merger: The merger of the high front lax vowel and the mid front lax vowel, esp. in Southern American English

Lambert and matched guise test

Matched guise test: A technique for studying language attitudes in which listeners judge different voices without knowing that they actually belong to a single multilingual speaker

Which of the following is NOT true?

Morphemes are the smallest units of language

Who did the British colonists come into contact with, and how did these groups affect English in North America?

Native Americans; lots of words for cultural artifacts, society, nature, food, animals; fauna, moose, squash, moccasin, totem French- government names; council, parliament, evidence Spanish- geographical names; cockroach, lasso, ranch, tequila, taco, burrito Dutch- architecture and people; cookie, boss, caboose, dope, dung

Is American speech becoming more homogenous?

No, it is becoming more different

Is standardization fully possible? Why?

No. Even with the force of the government, the educational system, and other institutions and authorities behind the promotion of the standard, language variation continues to exist and no country is linguistically homogeneous.

Careful vs Casual Style

People from the experiment were more careful when asked what floor shoes were located on a second time. Casual speech was used when first asked.

Why would someone want to standardize a language? Positives, negatives?

Positives: national unity, ease of communication, order in society, strong nation, promote the US as a global power, connection between language and patriotism, preserving the purity of the American tongue Negatives: promotes ideas of correct and incorrect language use and a standard language ideology, all other varieties are seen as "false"

Five periods of English (include names, dates and main reasons why they differ historically and linguistically)

Pre-English (Before 450 AD) Old English (449-1100 AD) Middle English (1100-1450 AD) Early Modern English (1450-1700 AD) Modern English (1700 AD-now)

Prescriptive vs Descriptive Grammar

Prescriptive Grammar: The rules applied to language that dictate a formal, standardized usage Descriptive grammar- The rules of naturally occurring speech

Four Sub-Processes of Standardization

Selection: choice of one dialect or variety to serve as a model from which the standard can be derived Codification: fixing of forms of the language-minimal variation in function (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, orthography) Elaboration: refers to the growing use of the codified variety in a number of domains and contexts- maximal variation in function Acceptance/Maintenance: group accepts new standard and maintains it by using it

Language Authorities

Society looks to these people for grammar rules (to determine what is grammatical or not) Examples include education system, dictionaries

ALAP DARE TELSUR

TELSUR=telephone survey; Labov; main objective was to explain contemporary variation and change in American English in terms of vowel shifts and vowel mergers and the sound systems of American regional dialects; Northern Cities Shift, Southern shift, caught-cot merger, don-dawn merger, low back merger ALAP=American Linguistic Atlas Projects- purpose was to determine the present geographic and social dissemination of individual expression in the eastern states and relating that back to the older English speaking America; questions were designed to elicit vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical variance that could indicate regional dialect patterns DARE=Dictionary of American Regional English; purpose was to basically ALAP but wanted to emphasize lexical items; informs its audience by providing relevant data to provide a general overview of items and terms of their meaning and function and speech as well as their regional and social distribution; apprehend criminals and used by physicians to communicate with patients' folk terminology.

Standard Language Ideology and effects on speakers' beliefs

The belief that only a standard form of a language is the correct, valid form and, thus, that all other forms are incorrect or invalid

Perceptual Dialectology

The study of attitudes towards language variation associated with region

Language Attitudes

The thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions held about language and language use

Grammar

The underlying structure of a linguistic system

Accent

The way in which a speaker of a particular linguistic variety pronounces words and the rules that govern these pronunciations

Labov studies in Martha's Vineyard and NYC

Three different malls based on socioeconomics and asked where the shoes were located in the mall (fourth floor); realized that answers were different because richer individuals had r-less r's and poorer people pronounced their r's, but after being asked a second time, they were more cautious about their answer and attempted to copy the r-less r

How can a language change and vary in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, and orthography?

When language changes, it changes in all aspects including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, and orthography. For example, English has changed in all of these ways (e.g. name used to have an inflectional morpheme, name is spelled differently now; gay used to mean happy, but now means homosexual, double negatives are now used, phonologically--> metathesis, etc.)

How do we differentiate vowels?

front to back and high to low

Articulatory Phonetics

how speech sounds are produced

McWhorter: A language is like a...

lava lamp=language change Every aspect of it changes, constant movement, different lava lamps will change differently (doesn't follow the exact same pattern), it can vary with the amount of time it takes to change (slow or fast), you have things coming together and separating, and changes are relatively random

Idiolect

linguistic system of an individual person

Language and social media

new words/coinage: twitter, friending, selfie, tweet, OMG, LOL, unliked, unfavorited

Language

open, arbitrary (no inherent link between sound and meaning) conventional system of sounds or signs used for communication within a linguistic community

Relationship of accent to phonology

phonology is the study of how sounds affect one another in speech. Accent is the way something is pronounced.

Phrase Structure Rules

rules stating that the structure of a phrase of a specific type consists of one or more constituents in a particular order (Sentence-->NP, Affix, VP; NP-->(Art)(Adj)N; VP-->(Adv)V(NP))

Syntax

the order in which words can be combined in a given language for them to convey meaning

Lexicography

the practice of compiling dictionaries

Morphology

the rules of word formation in language

Phonetics

the study of speech sounds

Phonotactics

the study of the rules governing the possible phoneme sequences in a language

Lexicon

the vocabulary of a language or someone's "mental dictionary"

Reasons for the development of regional dialects

unity of a group, people settle each other and their language is influenced, language isolation

Orthography

writing system