HEL Exam #1

language family

a group of similar languages

inflectional language

a language that expresses grammatical relationships primarily by means of affixes attached to the roots of words (Latin and Greek)

Analogy

a process whereby one form of a language becomes more like another with which it has somehow associated."

sporadic change

addition of a vocabulary item to name a new product may be a sporadic change that has little impact on the rest of the lexicon (kleenex)

systematic change

affect an entire system or subsystem of the language

sibilants

apex is brought near the roof of the mouth and air is pushed past the tongue to make hissing sound

PDE

1800-

Proto-World. Proto-Human. Proto-Sapiens

Attempts to get back to the First Language

Types of semantic change

Generalization/narrowing, amelioration/pejoration, strengthening/weakening, abstraction/concretization, denotation/connotation

Stammbaum Theory, or "Tree Model

argues that languages split into dialects much like parents beget offspring.

Morphology

arrangement and relationships of the smallest meaningful units in a language

syntax

arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences

dorsum

back of tongue

alveolar ridge

bony structure located just behind the upper front teeth

abstraction/concretization

change in becoming more abstract or concrete

amelioration/pejoration

change to a more favorable/negative meaning

derivational

changes meaning or part of speech

affricates

combination of stop plus fricative

types of systematic change

conditioned and unconditioned

syllabic consonant

consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the m, n and l in the English words rhythm, button and bottle, or is the nucleus of a syllable, like the r sound in the American pronunciation of work

lexical morpheme

content words with referents in the real world

uvula

cylindrically shaped extension of velum that hangs down over the back of the tongue

hard palate

dome-shaped bony plate at roof of mouth

Generalization/narrowing

extension of meaning to cover wider semantic areas/restriction in the range of meaning of a word

outer history

the events that have happened to the speakers of a language leading to changes in the language, e.g. invasion.

August Schleicher

the first to compare the world's language families to the branches of a tree

glottis

opening between vocal cords

vocal cords

pair of elastic muscular bands rather like thick rubberbands

What are the interrelated systems of a language?

phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantics

five systems of language

phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantics

affixes

prefixes and suffixes

fricatives/spirants

produced by impeding but not totally blocking the stream of air form the lungs

Sir Walter Scott

provided explanation food having French names

denotation

real-world reference of a word changes

articulators

the movable parts of the speech tract: lips, tongue, and uvula

phonology

the sounds of a language and the study of these sounds

prosody

the stress patterns of a language

phonemics

the study of sounds of a given language as significantly contrastive members of a system

phonetics

the study of the sounds of speech taken simply as sounds and not necessarily as members of a system

ME

1100 AD to 1500 AD

EMnE

1500-1800

OE

450 AD to 1100 AD

When was Indo-european language spoken?

5000 BC-3000 BC

Nostratic

A hypothesized ancient "superfamily" of languages-a subdivision of the "Proto-World" approach

Native word

A word that has been in a language since its beginnings

Wellentheorie or "Wave Model

According to this theory, new features of a language spread from a central point in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water. This should lead to convergence among dissimilar languages.

basque

Language Isolate

Prosody

Stress patterns of a language

inner history

The changes that occur within a language itself that cannot be attributed to external forces

Monogenesis

The idea that all modern humans, and thus all human languages, originated with a small group of people. This theory is consistent with the "out of Africa" theory (OOA) that posits that all modern humans can be traced to peoples living in east Africa tens of thousands of years ago. This view is debated among linguists today

Joseph Greenberg

The linguist whose analysis identified the four major language families in Africa

orthography

The method of representing the sounds of a language by written symbols; essentially, the "art of spelling."

Etymology

The study of word origins and relationships

Johannes Schmidt

Wave model/ Wellentheorie

Sir William Jones

founded the correlation between Sanskrit, Latin and Greek

blade

front of tongue

isogloss

geographic boundary line delimiting the area in which a given linguistic feature occurs

phoneme

group of sounds that never contrast significantly with one another that speakers treat as the same sound

vowel descriptors

high, mid, low, front, central, back; tense, lax

articulatory description

how these sounds are produced by the mouth and tongue

inflecitonal

indicates a grammatical feature such as number, tense or possession

phonemes

individual members of a language system

two types of affixes (other than prefixes and suffixes)

inflectional and derivational

strengthening/weakening

intensification/weakening of meaning

Plosive

is a stop consonant that is released quickly, with a brief explosive sound known as a release burst

labials and bilabials

lips

lexicon

list of all the morphemes in the language

Asterisk

means either that the word or morpheme is unattested (i.e., we do not have a written text demonstrating that form), or that the example is ungrammatical

cognate languages

members of a language family

fussion

merge

morphemes

minimum units of meaning

voicless

no vibration of vocal cords

allophones

noncontrastive variants that comprise a phoneme

points of articulation

nonmovable portions of speech tract with which an articulator comes in contract or near contact

function morphemes

signal relationships within the language itself

velum/soft palate

soft muscular tissue behind hard palate

velar

sounds produced when back of tongue (dorsum) comes into contact with the velum

fission

split

plosives

stops; sounds produced by blocking the flow of air completely at some point in the mouth and then fully releasing it

aspiration

strong puff of air

semantics

study of meanings or all the meanings expressed by a language; the relationship between language and the real world

Languages are _______ and ___________.

systematic and conventional

dental and interdental

teeth

labiodental

teeth and lips

connotation

the entire set of associations that one makes to a word in addition to its literal sense

apex

tip of tongue

voiced

vocal cords vibrate

resonants

voiced only

Semivowels

vowel-like consonants: that is, the air-flow is not stopped or impeded so as to cause a friction-sound, but the aperture through which the air passes is smaller than the aperture of any vowel. Also, in forming words, semivowels appear in positions where consonants normally appear

diphthongs

vowel-like sound produced while the tongue is moving from one vowel position toward another