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Ling 100 - Midterm 2
From Topic 5 - Topic 8
92
Language - English
Undergraduate 1
11/02/2007

Additional Language - English Flashcards

 


 

Cards

Term
Infant before 6 months respond to ______ contrasts found in some human langauges even when these differeneces are not __________ . Infants however will not respond to a change in ______ _______
Definition

phonetic - physical nature of speech sounds

               eg.(p^h) vs (p)

phonemic -  the smallest unit of speech that distinguishes meaning

                eg. /t/ found in words like tip, stand, writer, and cat

Sound Signals - eg. Male / female

Term

English infants can't distinguish between p and p^h while their parents can

True or False? 

Definition
False, English infants can distinguist between p and p^h while their parents cannot.
Term
Name two example experiments that show that infants can perceive the distinction between speech sounds.
Definition

Pacifier Sucking Experiment

    - baby sucking pacifier (whose listening to music) starts sucking slower but when music changes he/she sucks faster.

Head Turning Experiement

    - Sound in background and baby is being distracted by toy. When sound changes baby turns head and is rewarded with flashing lights. 

Term
When do infants begin to babble?
Definition
Six months
Term
What is babble?
Definition
Babies/infants zoning in on the parents language (pitch and intonation(various tones)) and try to produce words, although not sucessful.
Term
Infants who do not babble for some physiological / neutological reason experience what?
Definition
seriously retarded in speech  development, thought they evetually catch up, with no permanent problems.
Term
How is the babbling produced (verbally) by deaf infants. Do they babble in other ways as well?
Definition

Deaf infants produced unsystematic, non-repetative, and random babble

- If exposed to sign language , they babble with their hands. 

Term
What are the five stages a child goes through to acquire language?
Definition

- Babbling Stage 

    eg "ga ga goo goo "

- One Word Stage

    eg. "Up" or "No" 

- Two Word Stage

    eg. "No Pee" or "All dry" 

- Telegraphic

    eg. "Cat stand up table" or "No sit there" 

- Infinity 

Term
Describe what the "One word" stage of an infant is and when do they acquire it?
Definition

- Children using one word to describe whole sentences

    eg. "no" --> "I don't want to do that!"

They being to acquire one word some time after one year 

Term
Generally, How many syllables are childrens first words?
Definition

Monosyllabic

- [sa] sock

- [ma] mommy

- [da] doggy 

Term
Explain the Fis - phenomenon and what is it proving.
Definition

A child reffering to a fish as "fis"

When adults asked him where his "fis" is, the child didn't understand

When adults ask him where his "fish" is, the child understood.

Children can't produce difficult sounds such as [sh] 

Term

By 2 years old, and child's word learning rate jumps to '___ new word every two hours' minumum (which they mantain through adolescence).

 

Definition
one
Term
Is there tense's in babies (two year) two word stage?
Definition
No, just like there is no grammatical markers for such inflecations for number and person
Term

Children's two word utterance look like samples drawn from longer potential sentences. True or False?

Definition

True

eg. "Mommy sock" --> "Mother puts the sock on the child."

     "Mommy sock" ---> "Mommy's sock" 

Term
Describe the Telgraph Stage of an infant and what type of words do they contain?
Definition

From  2 -3 years old, children produce utteances that contain more then two words

    eg. Cat stand up table

           He play little tun

- content words, (function words and grammatical morphemes are left out)

Term
When do children begin to produce grammitcal morhpemes and use functional words?
Definition
By the age of 3
Term
Do children acquire langauge through imitation?
Definition

No, they produce utterances that there parents never produce

    eg. What the boy hit?

 there parents never said this.

Term
Do children acquire language though reinforcement?
Definition

No, if children do ever get reinforement for what they say, its usually for incorrect pronunciation.

- Children do not know what they are doing wrong and are unable to make corrections when they are pointed out.

 eg.  "other one spoon"  --> "the other spoon"

Term
Do Children acquire Language through Analogy(cognitive process of transferring information from a particular
Definition

No, they would use one sentence to produce another

eg. I painted barn red  ---> I painted barn blue

but in the same sense they could produce ungrammitcal sentences then

eg. I saw a barn red

Term
Do children acquire language through Rule formation? Explain?
Definition
Yes they do. they start with simple rules and progresses to more complex rules.
Term
What is overgeneralization and what does it prove about language acquistion?
Definition

Overgeneralization- taking one rule and applying it to another aspect (even though it might be wrong)

- the fact that children overgeneralize shows they are forming rules and applying them. 

Term
If enough children do not hear the irregular form of a word enough, what can occur? (If they are not corrected )
Definition

Then these words get changed in our language itself.

eg. abode --> abided 

Term
Give an example of two rules that children 3-5 learn from rule formation.
Definition

The wug test

 children forming yes-no questions

    eg. Is the boy who is unhappy watching Mickey Mouse? (child said)

       

Term
What is poverty of the stimulus?
Definition

Input that children receive from the surrnding enviroment is impoverished. (slips of the tongue, false starts, incomplete and ungrammatical strings)

 

Term
If children are rasied with poverty of stimulus how they acquire there mother tongue.?
Definition
Chilren innately equiped with special abilities to know what generalizations to look for, what to ignore, and how to discover the regularites of language.
Term
What is the innateness hypothesis? What does linguist's call this blueprint?
Definition

Human species innately equipped with "language facilty" in left hemisphere which contatins blueprint for language acquistions that tells children how to extract patterns and grammar from there parents.

 - Universal Grammar which is shared by all humans in the world.

Term
What was the evidence from emerging sign language in Nicaragua that humans are born with an innate language faculty.
Definition

Children took the impovrished NSL and changed it to be more appropriate.

eg. 1st generation described two motions simultaneously

   the 2nd and 3rd produced seperate motions. 

Term
Why can't babies speak from the begininng?
Definition

When born, we are not physically mature enough to hangle language

 - (physically, tounge, brain, cc) 

Term
Explain a babies vocal tract and what happens to it after three months.
Definition

- tract more like ape, larnyx comes and engages with nasal passage (forcing baby to breathe through nose) --> possible to drink and breathe (prevents choking)

- after 3 months, larynx descends depp into throat --> opening up the cavity behing the tongue that allows the tongue to move forward backwards. (increases risk of choking but increases range of sounds (words)) 

Term
How does a babies brain change from birth?
Definition

- head size, brain weight, thickness of cerbral cortex(grey matter)

- white matter not complete until nine months

- Synapses continue to devolp peaking between nine months and two years (50% more then adults)

- metabolic activity in the brain reachs adult levels (9-10 months), peaks around age of four 

Term
When is the critcal age (uncoscius language acqisiton)? Why?
Definition

Birth to puberty 

if language is not learned during this period, then it makes it diffucult or impossible to learn later. 

eg. wild children, genie (attic), Chelsea (deaf) 

 Because changes in brain start to decrease

Term
Is language part of general intelligence? explain.
Definition
No, if it was, then we would be able to learn language just as easily when we are young.
Term
What is code switching?
Definition
shifting from one language to another in the middle of a sentence.
Term
Give proof that languages are stored in diff. parts of brain.
Definition
- after stroke, one is kept one is lost
Term
Name three factors that effect bilingual brain representation.
Definition

1) Age

2) Task

3)type of instruction 

Term
In late bilinguals how is language represented in the Broca's and Wernicke's area?
Definition

Broca - two diff regions

Wernicckes - overlapping regions 

Term
In Early bilinguals, how is language represented?
Definition
Brocas and Wernicke's area is overlapping regions.
Term
What part of your brain is used to keep linguistic abilites(languages) apart?
Definition
left prefrontal cortex
Term
The righ hemisphers is involvled in what when learning L2?
Definition
processing of pragmatic aspects of lagnuage use
Term
What are Historical Linguistics?
Definition
Study of how languages changes over time, what kinds of change occur and why they occur
Term
What is velar and palatal fricative?
Definition

v - air friction against soft part of roof of mouth --

p - air friction against hard part of roof --> zzzzzzz 

Term
Name two phonological changes that happen to languages over time.
Definition

- change in the inventory of sounds

        eg. loss of velar fricative or addition of patalal fricative (zzz..lesurie)

 

- change in phonological rules

    eg. unstressed vowel deletion rule : deletes unstressed short vowels at the end of words.

    eg. intervocalic deletion rule: /s/ becomes [z] 

Term
Name a major Phonological change that occured to the English language and explain what it is.
Definition

- The great vowel shift

 

eg. mis - mice; mus - mouse 

- resulted in new phonemic representations of words and morphemes 

Term
What is the Syntactic Change that occured to enlgihs?
Definition

word order was freer but now, not so much.

 

eg. Thone kyning se man sloh --> The king the man slew

 

The first sentence would have worked back in the day, not anymore. 

 

 

 

Term
Name how negation changed (syntactic) in Old Enlgish?
Definition
The negation element, 'ne' changed from ne too 'not'
Term
What are loan words?
Definition
words that are borrowed from other languages
Term
Name three ways you can semanticly change a word.
Definition

- broaden

    eg. butcher -- goats -- any animal

- narrowing

    eg. starve - die - die/food

- meaning shift

    eg. fond -- foolish -- like

Term
Why do languages change?
Definition
as children learn a language, they might change it according to how they learned it.
Term
What are two different ways that languages change?
Definition

- language contact

   migration -- bilingual children -- borrowed words, sounds.. etc

 

- social differntiation

  adopting dress, gestures, languages --> slang, vocab change etc. 

Term
What is assimilation?
Definition

one sound influences the pronunciation of another adjacent sound for ease-of articulation.

eg cinn - chin; ciese --> cheese 

Term
What is apocope?
Definition

the loss of a final vowel in languages with a strong stress accent on intial syllables of words

 

eg. German/englsih

 

Term
What is syncope?
Definition

the loss of medial vowels

 

eg. business, wednesday 

Term
Wht is analogic change?
Definition

a reduction of the number of irregular morhpemes

 

eg. dreamt - dreamed;  lit - lighted 

Term
What is metathesis?
Definition

an interchange and reordering of segments that effectively reverses the order of their sequence.

 

eg- brid --> bird 

Term
What is epenthesis?
Definition
insertion of vowels in a word
Term
Explain the genetic relationship between languages.
Definition
Some languages words sound fimailar (eg, father - padre) meaning that once they were a single language but as the ppl stop talking to each other they chnaged the language.
Term
What are cognates?
Definition
words in relalted languages that developed from the same ancestral roots
Term
What is grimms law?
Definition
sound shift that took place only in Germanic languages causing sound differences in cognates among germanic and other indo european languages.
Term
Name two rules when reconstruction proto-languages?
Definition

- weaking of word final vowels in common /delete final vowel

- loing consontants commonly become short consontants.
Term
What are two hypothesis on how PIE spread
Definition

Kurgan Hypothesis

   - 6000 or less years ago - nomadic warriors -- went through turkey, westren asia briingn culture with them

 

Farming-dispersal hyptothesis

    - 8000 or more years ago - farming spread to greece from Anatolia farmers - culture came with 

Term

What are lingustic paleontology

 

Definition
tries to discover what the past was like by looking for relics buried in languages.
Term
Name an argument for Kurgan Hypothesis
Definition

by taking series of inventions we know and seeing which one has pie names.

 

eg. pie has words like human and brother but not gun because gun wassnt invernte till 1300 ad 

Term
Tocharian is relatied to what?
Definition
Tocharian, is more related to European languages than indo-iranian languages
Term
What are molecular phylogny?
Definition
biologists use computational techniques to reconstruct evolutionary tress of lving organisms.
Term
What does molecular phylogeny have to do with PIE? and why does it suppost farming dispersal hypothesis.
Definition
this technique was applied to language, the dates found by this way agree with farming-dispersal hypothesis
Term
How is a language considered a dialect?
Definition

It is called Mutual intelligibilty

 - speakers can understand each other in most cases 

Term
How many languages are there in world today? What percent of this account for 96% of the speakers
Definition

6000

- 4% 

Term
How does a language die? (3)
Definition

- speakers die

- speakers killed (war)

- speakers switch language 

Term
How is a language revived?
Definition

a language previously not used is adopted and used more widely

 eg. Hebrew or Celtic 

Term
Name three ways languages are classified. Explain each.
Definition

Genetic

  - Based oin language families and language relationship

        - Eg. Indo European
 

Tyopological

 - Based on charecteriscs of language 

        - SVO, SOV

 

Aeriel

     - Based on geographical area where languages are located

           - not related, close contact, exchange linguistic patterns

 

Term

What is Sprachbund and what does it mean in German

 

Definition

languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity

 

- language union 

Term
What are Isolating(analytic) Languages?
Definition

An isolating language is any language where the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and are considered to be full-fledged "words", rather than particles 

 

eg. ed - wrong

      - le - the , correct 

Term
What are Polysyntetic language?
Definition
majority words meaning senteces
Term
What is agglutinating Language?
Definition
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together.
Term
What are fusional (infectional) languages?
Definition
Much like agglutination, but the morphemes may be associted with moe than one meaning
Term
Languages are also classifeid according to word order. True or False
Definition

True

 - SOV, SVO 

Term
Name the three type of language Universals.
Definition

absolute  universal

     - those that occur in all languages ei sentence hieracal structure

universal tenencies

     - occurs in most languages ei. having a subject.

implicational universals

        the presence of a feature determines other features

                   ei. if you have A then you have B

                       VO or OV

Term
Name two familes bigger then Indo-European.
Definition

Nostratic - indo euro, uralic...

Dene-Caucasina: Basque, N. Caucasion 

Term
Give three reasons why Proto World language is hard to determine.
Definition

- words change over short period of time, hard to match

- if found similar words... coincidences or borrowing?

- cross linguistic similarites might be coincidence 

Term
What is communication?
Definition
exchange of info
Term
A sign consists of what??  
Definition

signifier - word, gesture

 

signified - meaning 

Term
Name the different types of signs (4)
Definition

Iconic

    - somewhat resemble what ei. male broom sign

Indexical

        partial rep sample of what it is. ei. smoke as a sign of fire

       

        Symptomatic

               - no control of expressing or not ei. saying 'ouch!'

Symbolic

    - signifer  not equal to signified, most words in language are

 

Term
Name two different types of sign structure.  
Definition

Graded signs

 -   their meaning changes as degree changes ei. rasing voice

 

Discrete signs 

    - able to tell diff. by categories ei. words sound diff

Term
Animal communications are iindexical and symptomatic? True or false
Definition
False, largely iconic and symtomatic
Term
Human language is arbitrary, symbolic an discrete?
Definition
True
Term
Name the three dances a bee does.
Definition

round

  - food 6 meters away

sickle

    - 6 -18 metres

tail wiggle

      - 18 metres farther 

 

- faster dance, more repetions, better quailty 

Term
What is the main purpose of a birds song?
Definition
to announce and delimit the terriroty of male and to attract a male
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