click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Chapter 6
Language
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Language | a set of sounds and symbols that are used for communication |
Mutual intelligibility | ability of two people to understand each other when speaking |
Standard language | the variant of a language that a country's political and intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm for use in schools, government, the media, and other aspects of public life |
Dialect | variants of a standard language along regional or ethic lines |
Dialect chain | a group of contiguous dialects where the dialects nearest to each other geographically are the most similar and the dialects farther apart are least similar |
Isogloss | a geographic boundary where linguistic features occur |
Language Family | group of languages with a shared but distant origin |
Language subfamilies | divisions within a language family where commonalities are more definite and the origin is more recent |
Cognate | a world in one language that shares its origin with a word in another language, have similar meanings and spellings and show shared origins and connections among languages |
Language divergence | process where discrete, new languages are eventually formed from one language. Happens when people speaking two dialects of a language are relatively isolated from each other and have little spatial interaction; the opposite of language convergence |
Backward reconstruction | tracking sound shifts and hardening consonants backward to uncover an original language |
Language convergence | process where two languages collapse into one language. Happens when people speaking two languages have frequent and consistent spatial interaction with each other; the opposite of language divergence |
Extinct language | language without any native speakers |
Conquest theory | idea that early speakers of Proto-Indo-European left the hearth area and moved westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion of Indo-European tongues |
Agriculture Theory | the theory that the Proto-Indo-European language spread with the diffusion of agriculture |
Vernacular | a language used in everyday interaction among a group of people in a local area |
Lingua franca | language used for trade or cultural interaction among people who speak different languages |
Pidgin language | combination of two or more languages in a simplified structure and vocabulary |
Creole language | a language that began as a pidgin language and was later adopted as the mother tongue of a people |
Toponym | place name |