Question | Answer |
form of English; used by many Afr. Amer.; among rural/urban working-class backgrounds | African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) |
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is also known as | Ebonics |
2/more different phones, can be used to make same phoneme in a specific language | allophones |
unit of meaning that must be associated with another | bound morpheme |
form of communication among nonhuman primates composed of limited # of sounds tied to specific stimuli in environment | call system |
study of different ways cultures understand time & use it to communicate | chronemics |
ability of individuals who speak multiple languages to move seamlessly between them | code switching |
act of transmitting information | communication |
science of documenting relationships between languages & grouping them into language families | comparative linguistics |
notion that, in human language, words are only arbitrarily/conventionally connected to things for which they stand | conventionality |
first language that is composed of elements of two or more different languages | creole |
study & analysis of structure & content of particular languages | descriptive or structural linguistics |
grammatical constructions that deviate from those used by socially dominant group in a society | dialect |
capacity of all human languages to describe things not happening in the present | displacement |
unit of meaning that may stand alone as a word | free morpheme |
statistical technique that linguists have developed to estimate date of separation of related languages | glottochronology |
analysis and study of touch | haptics |
system of writing designed to represent all sounds used in different languages of the world | International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) |
study of body position, movement, facial expressions, & gaze | kinesics |
total stock of words in a language | lexicon |
smallest unit of language that has a meaning | morpheme |
system for creating words from sounds | morphology |
sound made by humans & used in any language | phone |
smallest significant unit of sound in a language | phoneme |
a __ system is the sound system of a language | phonemic |
sound system of a language | phonology |
language of contact & trade composed of features of original languages of 2/more societies | pidgin |
pidgin & creole are __ languages | comparative |
idea that humans can combine words & sounds into new, meaningful utterances they have never before heard | productivity |
study of cultural use of interpersonal space | proxemics |
hypothesis that perceptions & understandings of time, space, & matter are conditioned by structure of a language | Sapir-Whorf hypothesis |
subsystem of a language that relates words to meaning | semantics |
specialization within anthropological linguistics that focuses on speech performance | sociolinguistics |
group of people who share a set of norms & rules for the use of language | speech community |
form of English spoken by most of the American middle class | Standard Spoken American English (SSAE) |
part of grammar that has to do w/arrangement of words to form phrases & sentences | syntax |
basic set of principles, conditions, & rules that underlie all languages | universal grammar |
smallest part of a sentence that can be said alone & still retain its meaning | word |
communication in all animal species depends on a consistent set of __ by which individuals convey info | signals |
communication signals are channeled through | visual, olfactory, auditory, & tactile senses |
uses stereotyped & patterned movements to communicate info about direction & distance of target in relation to base | scout honeybee |
caw as a signal of danger | crow |
chirp when they are ready to mate | crickets |
have "signature whistles" that enable them to identify each other as individuals | dolphins |
capable of creating complex thought patterns & experiences in words | human language |
human language is distinct from other animal communication systems in | conventionality, productivity, & displacement |
productive capacity for human language is sometimes called | openness |
among nonhuman animals communication is generally about the __ & the __ | present; particular |
human language __, making some objects & events as similar & others as dissimilar | categorizes |
complex human behavior patterns could not exist without the __ __ of human language | symbolizing capacity |
human language reflects the particular character of our | adaptation |
increases in sophistication of communication led to increases in the | complexity of culture |
1970s suggested that language evolved by blending & duality of patterning | Charles Hockett |
combining two words to make a third word (i.e. breakfast + lunch = brunch) | blending |
combing sound units that compose breakfast & lunch to make great many different new words, i.e. bench, bunch, chest, fun, less, lust, etc. | duality of patterning |
2 million yrs ago w/emergence of genus Homo; 200,000 yrs ago w/earliest Homo sapiens; 50,000 yrs ago w/human tool-making & symbolic expression | origin of language |
unless prevented by total social isolation or physical incapacity, all humans learn a first language as part of | childhood developmental process |
regardless of language being learned all go through same __, __, & __ of language | stages; sequence; speed |
visual & auditory areas of brain are directly connected to each other & both are connected w/brain region concerned with | touch |
in humans the food & air tract are | connected |
"language instinct" to learn language of the group into which individual is socialized | Steven Pinker |
among animals instinct for communication means patterns of communication are expression of underlying | genetic codes |
ordered 2 infants reared where they could hear no human voices in order to learn original language of humankind; Phrygian | Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus |
experimented w/ infants reared where they could hear no human voices in order to learn original language of humankind; Hebrew | King James IV of Scotland |
modern evidence shows that infants reared where they could hear no human voices would | not speak any intelligible language |
child discovered 1970s locked in attic for 1st 12yrs of life; acquired lrg vocab but never mastered English syntax | Genie |
there is a __ __ of language development for humans | critical period |
all children are capable of __ __ before the age of 6 yrs | learning language |
after puberty is rare for a human to learn to speak a 2nd language with | proficiency of native speaker |
by age of 6 months old human infants' babbling includes consonant & vowel __ & __ patterns | sequences; repetitive |
even when children do not understand what they are saying they can speak __ using different parts of speech in correct relation to one another | grammatically |
universality of process of learning a 1st language as well as underlying similarities that unite all human languages lead to propose universal grammar | Noam Chomsky |
children learn language by applying unconscious __ grammar to the sounds they hear | universal |
FORTRAN, Pascal, C, & BASIC are examples of | computer language |
Chomsky argues that each individual is born with an __ universal grammar, analogous to a __ language | instinctive; programming |
child "programs" their language by interacting __ with other people | verbally |
children must learn __ __ about how to use language to participate in society | social rules |
examined language acquisition among white-middle class Americans, Samoans, & Kaluli of Papua New Guinea | Ochs & Schieffelin |
spend great deal of time talking w/infants using simplified "baby talk" & encouraging them to speak | Americans |
rarely talk to their infants, except for occasional rebuke; utterance of young children have no importance | Kaluli |
talk to children using adult speech, frequently rebuking them; utterance of young children have no importance | Samoan |
Ochs & Schieffelin found that in all 3 societies children learn to speak at the same __ & same level of __ | speed; competence |
Ochs & Schieffelin found that in all 3 societies children learn different __ rules | social |
Ochs & Schieffelin found that process of learning to produce grammatical speech is largely a function of | biology |
Ochs & Schieffelin found that process of learning to be a member of a speech community is clearly a function of | culture |
an internal logic & particular relationship among its parts | language structure |
every language has a | structure |
descriptive/structural linguistics study language __ from the social context in which speaking takes place | separate |
the work of descriptive/structural linguistics suggest that structure of language consists of | four subsystems |
phonology, morphology, syntax & semantics are the __ of descriptive/structural linguistics | subsystems |
any particular language uses a __ numbers of phones & those are the ones its speakers learn to make & __ | small; recognize |
__ of sounds are used in different way in different languages | combination |
set of phones used in particular language is referred to as the __ of the language | phonemes |
includes at least 6 different phones | English phoneme /t/ |
calculating precise number of phonemes in any language is difficult because different speakers have different | accents |
most of the __ __ have between 20-40 phonemes | world's languages |
indigenous language of Brazil with only 11-12 phonemes | Mura |
"click" languages of S. Africa have over 140 phonemes | Khoisan |
believed to have between 40-45 phonemes | English |
there is no relationship between the number of phonemes in a language & number of | things that can be said |
-s, -un, & -er, are considered __ morphemes | bound |
giraffe is considered a __ morpheme | free |
giraffe is an example of a __ __ | single-morpheme word |
teacher has __ morphemes | two |
unlocks has __ morphemes | three |
languages __ in extent to which their words tends to contain only one, several, or many morphemes | differ |
isolating language; have relatively few morphemes per word, and rules for combining morphemes are fairly simple | English & Chinese |
agglutinating language; allowing great number of morphemes per word & have highly regular rules for combining them | Turkish |
synthetic language; words w/great many morphemes & complex, highly irregular rules for combination | Mohawk & Inuktitut |
translating a single word may require an entire English sentence | agglutinating or synthetic languages |
description of morphology must specify both __ __ for combination of morphemes & their __ in a particular language | general rules; exceptions |
languages differ in their __ structures | syntactic |
in English __ __ is important because it conveys meanings | word order |
the subject & object of sentence are indicated by word endings rather than word order | Latin |
when descriptive linguistics analyze the __ __ of a language they establish different classes, or parts of speech for that language | syntactic structure |
all languages have a __ __ of nouns | word class |
different languages have different __ of nouns | subclasses |
different subclasses of nouns are referred to as | genders |
can apply to verbs, indefinite & definite articles, & adjectives | gender classification |
gender classification of verbs, indefinite & definite articles, & adjectives must agreed with gender classification of | nouns |
have neuter subclass of nouns | German & Latin |
language spoken in E Africa w/16 genders of nouns | Kivunjo |
Native American language w/only 2 genders that are :living things" & "growing things" | Papago |
all animate objects, such as people/animals in Papago | living things |
refer to inanimate objects, such as plants/rocks in Papago | growing things |
applying the __ __ __ turns meaningless sequences of words into meaningful utterances | rules of grammar |
lexicons illustrate the relationship between | culture & language |
lexicons give __ to ways members of a culture understand their physical & social environments | clues |
variety of words in Hindi, for brother-in-law, reflects fact that women treat members of each of these categories | differently |
theorizes that language could be best understood by separating it into language & speech | Ferdinand de Saussure |
langue; arbitrary & abstract system of signs that existed independently of any speaker | language |
parole; actual performance of language by individual speaker | speech |
believe one should enter & leave a room as unobtrusively as possible; fear talking about misfortune brings it on | Apache |
attempts to identify, describe, & understand cultural patterning of different speech events within a speech community | sociolinguist |
ways in which people speak are highly dependent on __ of their speech | context |
different cultures have different norms regarding __ speeches | political |
sociolinguists are interested in way in which speech varies depending on person's position in social __ or __ | structure; relationship |
in some cultures different __ __ are used depending on whether speaker/hearer are intimate friends, acquaintances on equal footing, or people of different social statuses | speech forms |
have formal & informal pronouns & conjugations that are not found in English | French, German & Spanish |
refusal to use the word 'you' to address clergy/aristocracy was an act of political & religious defiance | Quakers |
all languages are equally | sophisticated |
all languages serve the needs of their __ equally well | speakers |
all languages every human being speaks with equal __ sophistication | grammatical |
in complex stratified societies some speech is considered __ and others are judged __ | correct; inferior |
in hierarchical societies the __ __ group determines what is "proper" in language | most powerful |
grammatical construction used by the __ __ in hierarchical societies are considered language | social elite |
in hierarchical societies, __ from grammatical constructions by the most powerful group are considered dialects | deviations |
power of the speaker, rather than any __ __ of a speech form determines language's acceptability | inherent qualities |
defined language as "a dialect with an army & a navy" | Max Weinreich |
in the US relation of __ __ to social class & power is reflected in the speech of different social classes | language usage |
noted that elites & working-class people have different vocabularies & pronounce words differently | William Labov |
forms associated w/higher socioeconomic status are considered | proper |
forms spoken by those in lower socioeconomic statuses are considered incorrect and | stigmatized |
found that speakers often vary their vocab & pronunciation in different contexts & that the degree of such variation is related to their social class | Labov |
Labov found that elites use __ forms of speech | privileged |
Labov found that the poor use stigmatized __ of speech | forms |
Labov found that lower-middle class often used __ forms in casual speech but __ forms in careful speech | stigmatized; privileged |
Labov's study shows that what we say & how we say it are ways of telling people who we are __, or perhaps who we would like to be | socially |
Appalachian English, Dutchfield Pennsylvania English, Hawaiian Creole, Gullah, & emergent Hispanic Englishes are all considered __ __ of American English | stigmatized variants |
is simply a variant of Standard English, no better or worse than any other | AAVE |
Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, George Gershwin, Public Enemy & Run DMC all show the __ __ Ebonics has on American art, literature, speech, & music | deep influence |
AAVE has deep roots in the __ & __ working-class African-American communities | rural; urban |
1950s-70s-group of linguists, psychologists & educators argued that African-American children did poorly in school because of general cognitive deficiencies, in which language played a key role | cultural deficit theorists |
cultural deficit theorists argued that the poor speech of African-American children was due to a __ __ home environment | culturally deprived |
cultural deficit theorists considered the poor speech of African-American children as | coarse, simple, & irrational |
cultural deficit theorists proposed that if people could be taught to speak Standard English they would be able to __ __ __, & this would help lift them from poverty | think more logically |
work of William Labov & others was central to __ arguments of cultural deficit theorists | countering |
through __ __ __ Labov showed inner-city black speech was no more/less complex, rational or orderly than that of other English speakers | analysis of dialogues |
Labov showed that AAVE simply __ __ __, many of which were also found in other languages | followed different rules |
mid-1990s, __ __ __ encouraged teachers to make use of Ebonics in teaching Standard English | Oakland School Board |
denounced Ebonics as "absurd" | N. Carolina legislator |
referred to "the Ebonic plague" | Atlanta Constitution editorial |
AAVE may deliver " formal/informal knowledge as well as local knowledge & wisdom" | Marcyliena Morgan |
in the dominant cultural system AAVE symbolizes | deviance & ignorance |
in the dominant cultural system SSAE symbolizes | normality & intelligence |
those who code switch use each language in the __ that is appropriate to it | setting |
anthropological approach to studying AAVE allowed linguists to get an accurate appreciation only when they studied it within its | own cultural context |
believed that languages had a compelling influence on thought | Edward Sapir & Benjamin Lee Whorf |
"no 2 languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality" | Sapir |
Sapir & Whorf proposed that we __ the world in certain ways because we __ about the world in certain ways | perceive; talk |
Sapir & Whorf proposed that cultural ideas & behavioral norms are | encoded in language |
governments that controlled all the words people used caused people to invent new words or give old ones __ & __ meanings | new; ironic |
going beyond word choice, Sapir-Whorf argued that grammatical structure of languages compelled their speakers to __ & __ in certain ways | think; behave |
Whorf claimed because tenses in Hopi language differed from English tenses, Hopi speakers necessarily understood time is different ways than English speakers; sometimes called | strong determinism |
applied Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to Navajo; found parallels to linguistic emphasis on motion in many aspects of Navajo culture | Harry Hoijer |
argued that space is understood differently in English & Korean | Bowerman |
reported that members of Brazilian tribe have difficulty understanding & recalling numbers for which they have no words | Gordon |
relationship between language & thought seems both fairly weak & related primarily to __ rather than __ of language | vocabulary; structure |
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis missed that no one has ever found a meaning in one language that is completely __ to speakers of other languages | incomprehensible |
men often wear veils & use their position as an important part of nonverbal communication | Tuareg of Sahara |
Tuareg male lowers his veil only among __ & people of __ social status | intimates; lower |
avoid use of left hand for eating handling money & many other social interactions because it is considered unclean | people in Middle East |
where people tend to interact at close distances & touch one another frequently; common in Middle East, India, Mediterranean, & Latin America | "contact" cultures |
where people tend to interact at greater distance & avoid touching; common in Europe, N America, & Japan | "noncontact" cultures |
contact culture between equals, but noncontact culture between persons regarded as socially unequal | India |
in public social relationships the person who touches another is likely to have more power than person who is touched | US |
divided those into monochronic time (M-time) & those w/polychronic (P-time) time | Edward Hall |
cultures time perceived as inflexible & people organize their lives according to schedules; US & northern European countries | M-time |
time is understood as fluid; emphasis on social interaction & activities are not expected to proceed like clockwork; | P-time |
captures basic truth about cultural variation but fails to account for enormous variability within cultures | M/P-time dichotomy |
identified three different ranges of personal communicative space | Hall |
from 1-18"; typical for lovers & very intimate friends | intimate distance |
from 18"-4'; characterizes relationships among friends | personal distance |
from 4-12'; common among relative strangers | social distance |
intimate, personal & social distance are also affected by __, __, __, & __ of individual personality | circumstances; culture; gender; aspects |
men & women talk at close distances with members of their own sex but at very large distances with members of opposite sex | Turkey |
virtually all __ __ can have significance | body movements |
suggested that the job of an ethnographers was learning to tell the winks from twitches | Clifford Geertz |
it is likely that smiling, & some other facial expressions, are | biologically based human universals |
often smile to make their guests feel comfortable rather than because they are happy | Japanese |
1400-1600AD change in sound of English that is called the | Great Vowel Shift |
since about 1950 some vowel sounds in US cities around Great Lakes have been changing, a process linguists call the | northern city shift |
the ending of nouns indicated whether they were subjects or objects, making word order within the sentence less important, much like in Latin | Old English |
most noticeable aspect of language change; easily seen in slang | vocabulary |
meeting of culture through travel, trade, war, & conquest is a __ __ in linguistic change | fundamental force |
French words such as 'reason' 'joy' 'mutton' & 'liberty' came to the language after | Norman Conquest of England |
'cot' 'pajamas' & 'jungle' come from Hindi reflecting the | British colonization of India |
'gumbo' 'funky' & 'zebra' come from Kongo & reflect the | slave trade |
'tomato' 'coyote' 'shack' & 'avocado' come from Nahuatl spoken in | Mexico & Central America |
no one speaks pidgins as a __ language, and __ of pidgins is often limited to words appropriate to sorts of interactions engaged by people speaking it | first; vocabulary |
when people speak only the language of the dominant power, sometimes the pidgins | are lost |
unlike pidgins, people do speak creoles as a | first language |
many creoles were formed when Europe expanded into | Asia & the Americas |
in colonized countries often the upper class would speak the language of the __ __ & lower classes speak creoles | colonizing power |
70-90 percent of population speak Creole but almost all governmental & administrative functions are performed in French | Haiti |
when similarities in language are numerous, regular & basic it is likely that the languages are derived from the same | ancestral language |
many believed that __ __ change at a predictable rate of 14% per 1000 years | core vocabularies |
if linguists examined core vocabularies of 2 related language and found they were 28% different they would propose that the languages __ 1000 years ago | separated |
using techniques from both comparative linguistics & biology argue there was an original language & it had many of the characteristics associated with modern-day African "click" | Alec Knight |
development of language almost certainly involved specific | genetic changes |
today 95% of the world's languages are spoken by only 5% of the | world's total population |
1885 American government forbade use of __ __ in Bureau of Indian Affairs schools | Indian languages |
although the number of languages in the world has decreased the __ within each language has increased | diversity |
human ability to create new meanings, new words, & new grammatical structures | nature of language |
language __ to the needs, interests, & environments of its speakers | adapts |
had a vocabulary of about 100 words & researcher Irene Pepperberg claimed it could use these words in ways that showed productivity, use of syntax, & understanding of meaning | Alex, African Gray parrot |
attempted to teach sign language to "Washoe"; claimed after learning 10 signs Washoe spontaneously started to produce new combinations of signs | Allen & Beatrice Gardner |
taught Kanzi bonobo chimp vocab of about 150 signs; able to arrange into sentence-like strings | Sue Savage-Rumbaugh |
believed that his attempts to train a chimp did not result in any humanlike language capabilities | Terrace |
analysis of material from Kanzi concluded that animal probably did not have mental representations of objects or events | Seidenberg & Pelitto |
the idea that "tomorrow I will try to do better than today" can be expressed in all human languages, but by | no other animal |
It is easy for children to __ a language until they are six | master |
studies of ways in which children learn language show that human beings may have an __ __ for learning language & will speak grammatically even if not taught to do so | inborn predisposition |
in English, bit and pit have __ __, thus /b/ and /p/ are phonemes | different meanings |
in Jamaica, people use cell phones to ask for gifts in order to | create or reinforce link-ups |
all the sounds used in the different languages of the world __ __ represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet | can be |
in some cultures, the speech form used depends on the __ __ __ of the individuals speaking | relative social status |