Eng 306 Study Guide For Test #1

Front 1

Lingua Franca

Back 1

refers to a common language used to communicate across cultures

Front 2

Where is English used as a lingua franca?

Back 2

science and air traffic control

Front 3

Why is English difficult for foreigners to learn?

Back 3

1. large vocabulary size (2-3 times larger than any other language on earth.

2. idiomatic nature of English

3. English's spelling system is not consistent and the rules of spelling are complicated by borrowing words from other languages and pronunciation shifts.

Front 4

What makes English a simple language to learn?

Back 4

1. There are no specialized endings to denote gender.

2. No separate versions of adjectives that depend upon the noun's genders.

3. No agreement issue regarding number and case.

4. Gender is important only when pronouns are involved (pronoun agreement).

Front 5

Bound Morpheme

Back 5

Groups of phonemes that cannot stand alone. They must be attached to a free morpheme to have meaning. (Examples are "un" and "ly")

Front 6

Free Morpheme

Back 6

Phonemes that can stand alone.

Front 7

What is the primary difference between animal and human communication?

Back 7

Human language is symbolic, NOT representational: meaning must be explained at least once before it makes sense.

Front 8

Representational language

Back 8

Language that imitates/represents an action that the user wishes to elicit from the viewer. There is no need for explanation or translation. (Example: international road signs)

Front 9

Sebeok and Terrance

Back 9

taught a chimp ASL, but hearing-impaired readers watched a video of chimps signing (ASL), and saw nothing of meaning or purpose in the interactions. They suggested that the apes were merely imitating human interactions, and imposing meaning and linguistic abilities on the subjects.

Front 10

Pinker

Back 10

goes further with his detractions, stating chimps show less language ability than a two-year-old human child and that their signing is always concrete and biological in nature (related to desires for food, drink, or play).

Front 11

Lexical word

Back 11

Form words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs--words that carry the content or meaning of a sentence.

Front 12

Grammatical words

Back 12

Structural words whose function in a sentence is to indicate how the lexical words are related to each other grammatically.

Front 13

Indefinite pronouns

Back 13

each, someone

Front 14

demonstrative pronouns

Back 14

this, those

Front 15

relative pronouns

Back 15

which, who

Front 16

modal auxiliary verbs

Back 16

may, could, will

Front 17

conjunctive adverbs

Back 17

thus, therefore

Front 18

affricate

Back 18

sounds that begin as stops and become fricatives (the "ch" in "church")

Front 19

alveolar

Back 19

the sounds where the tip of the tongue rests on the alveolar ridge (the "ch" sound)

Front 20

bilabial

Back 20

involves both lips (the "p" sound)

Front 21

dental

Back 21

the tongue is between the teeth (the "th" sound)

Front 22

diphthong

Back 22

sound that begins as one vowel and ends as another

Front 23

fricative

Back 23

also called "spirants"--the airstream causes friction around the point of articulation (PoA)

Front 24

glide

Back 24

(semivowels) sounds are neither fully vocalic nor fully consonated (the "w" in "wow")

Front 25

glottal

Back 25

the sound articulates from the throat (the voiceless "h" in "happy")

Front 26

labiodental

Back 26

one lip is folded btwn the teeth (the "f" sound)

Front 27

liquid

Back 27

air is allowed to slide around the tongue (the "l" in "loop")

Front 28

nasal

Back 28

air is bypassed into the nasal cavity and allowed to reverberate (the "n" in "noon")

Front 29

palatal

Back 29

air forced past the hard palate (the "z" sound)

Front 30

phone

Back 30

a phone is an unanalyzed sound of a language. It is the smallest identifiable sound unit found in a stream of speech that is able to be transcribed with an IPA symbol.

Front 31

phoneme

Back 31

the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language

Front 32

phonetics

Back 32

the study of these language sounds

Front 33

stop

Back 33

also called "plosives"--air explodes from the point of articulation

Front 34

velar

Back 34

the air forced past the soft palate (the hard "g" sound in "gale")

Front 35

bound root

Back 35

a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme

Front 36

derivational morpheme

Back 36

when added to a free morpheme, they derive or create a new word. They can be prefixes or suffixes. They do not change the grammatical function, but they can change its part of speech.

Front 37

inflectional morpheme

Back 37

when added to a new word, it changes the grammatical function in some way. In English, all inflectional morphemes are suffixes.

Front 38

anaptyxis

Back 38

when an extra vowel is inserted into a word to break up a difficult consonant cluster, like when "athlete" is pronounced "ath-e-lete"

Front 39

assimilation

Back 39

a specific example of the Principle of Least Effort--a redundancy rule which assumes that in a given phonetic environment, specific phones will assimilate/take on the phonetic qualities of sounds around them

Front 40

dissimilation

Back 40

the opposite of assimilation, a redundancy rule which causes sounds in close proximity to each other to become less like each other. Example: "chimney" is pronounced "chimbley"

Front 41

excresence

Back 41

when a consonant is inserted (like the "chimney" becoming "chimbley" or "Clemson" becoming "Clempson"--with a "p" sound inserted between the "m" and "s" sounds

Front 42

haplology

Back 42

when entire syllables are deleted--for example, "library" is pronounced "li-bry" or "probably" as "prob-ly"

Front 43

metathesis

Back 43

when two adjacent phonemes in a word switch place. For example, switching the "m" and "n" sounds in "animals" to become "aminals" OE examples: "brid" becoming "bird" and "bren" becoming "burn"

Front 44

simplifications of consonant clusters

Back 44

when a word contains a difficult group of consonants (usually 3 in a row), speakers tend to drop one of the consonants in pronunciation. Example, the word "strength" is pronounced "strenth"

Front 45

dropping of final consonants

Back 45

a simplification of consonant structure. For example, "running" is pronounced "runnin'" and "shooting" is pronounced "shootin'"

Front 46

popular/folk etymology

Back 46

this is a form of analogy when two languages interact, with speakers of the predominant culture misunderstanding or mispronouncing a source word, thus creating a new term. For example, in Texas, the "Purgatoire River" is pronounced "Picket Wire River" or the French "Pourboire" sandwich becoming "Po-Boy" sandwich.

Front 47

code switching

Back 47

a language change brought about when a speaker subconsciously changes his dialectical form to match the prevailing forms of the surrounding culture. For example, when Madonna turned British or the tendency to get more Southern when speaking with a person with a strong Southern accent.

Front 48

neology

Back 48

the creation of new words--there are various ways this can happen

Front 49

compounding

Back 49

take two preexisting words from the language and connect them to create a new word to cover a new or developing concept. Example, "boombox," "charbroil," or "spacesuit"

Front 50

affixation

Back 50

the addition of derivational morphemes to preexisting bases to create new words. For example, "freedom" and "ugliness"

Front 51

borrowing

Back 51

taking words directly from another language group. For example, "chaise lounge," "kangaroo," and "kiwi"

Front 52

generalization/narrowing

Back 52

a type of semantic shift which occurs when words with rather narrow meanings expand to include other ideas or when words that express generic concepts become attached to one and only one idea.

Front 53

amelioration/pejoration

Back 53

occurs when a word's connotative meaning gets better over time or gets worse over time