Intro To Linguistics Terms

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Linguistic stress

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A prominence relation between syllables: certain syllables are longer, louder, higher-pitched, or more clearly articulated than those around them.

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Language family

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a group of languages evolved from a common source

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holophrastic stage

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The stage of linguistic development in which children produce one-word utterances to carry the meaning of what an adult would express in a longer sentence

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discourse

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language use above the sentence (text) and beyond the sentence (context)

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semantics

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the field of linguistics which studies literal meaning; the study of those aspects of meaning which are determined within the linguistic system

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comparative method

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A method employed in the reconstruction of a protolanguage from a comparison and analysis of cognates. The comparative method infers a common parent or protolanguage from a comparison of the cognate forms found in sister languages, and from analysis of the changes that have occurred in various sister languages.

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cooing

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vowel-like sounds of very young infants which are generally interpreted as signs of pleasure or playfulness

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telegraphic speech

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speech in which function(the, and, on) words are absent, common in the early stages of child development. So called because, like economical language used in telegraphs, it is seemingly direct and makes only limited use of morphological and syntactic markers

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nativism

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An approach to language acquisition, derived from the work of Noam Chomsky, which assumes that innate linguistic knowledge, or Universal Grammar (UG), guides all language learning

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syntax

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The rule-governed combination of words into phrases and sentences.

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suprasegmentals

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Aspects of speech that influence stretches of sound longer than a single segment: length, tone, intonation, syllable structure, and stress.

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allomorph

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A variant pronunciation of a morpheme that appears in a particular conditioning environment, e.g. the English negative prefix "in-" may be pronounced as "in","im", or "ing" depending on the first sound of the base it attaches to, e.g. inescapable, impossible, incapable (respectively).

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Grimm's law

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Jacob Grimm's description of the systematic shift of PIE (proto-IndoEuropean) consonants into Germanic

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babbling

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Prelinguistic vocal behavior produced by infants beginning at about four months of age; typically consists of simple syllables (e.g. ma ma) and later by sequences of different syllables (e.g. ma ba da)

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overgeneralization

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Misapplying a rule to an exceptional case, such as saying "goed" instead of "went"

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connectionism

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An approach used in the study of the mind and brain that models language and other mental functions as emerging from statistical learning that takes place over multiple interconnected units

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head (of a phrase)

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A key "word" (lexical item) from which a phrase of the same category is projected.

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poverty of stimulus

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The argument that the ability speakers demonstrate in conforming to the restrictions of natural grammar exceeds what could be learned from their experience with language, hence supporting the existence of a language organ (Universal Grammar)

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pragmatics

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The field of linguistics which studies meaning in particular contexts of use.

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implicature

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Speaker's meaning which comes about because of the cooperative principle.