Lin Midterm

Front 1

All Language is

Back 1

Rule Governed

Infinitely creative

Spontaneously acquired by infants.

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Syntax

Back 2

Part of grammar that represents a speakers knowledge of sentences and their structures.

Analyzed separately from meaning.

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Grammar

Back 3

A persons knowledge of a language system. This can be at an family level, dialect level, or a language level.

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5 components of a grammar

Back 4

Phonetics: Articulation and perception of speech sounds

Phonology: Patterning of speech sounds

Morphology: Word Formation

Syntax: Phrase and sentence formation

Semantics: Interpretation of words and sentences

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Grammatical

Back 5

Something which is acceptable within a persons grammar.

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Ungrammatical

Back 6

Something which does not fit into a persons grammar.

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Descriptive Grammar

Back 7

Model or description of a persons grammar.

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Prescriptive Grammar

Back 8

Rules of language as prescribed by the power class of society.

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Morphology

Back 9

Part of a grammar which concerns words and word formation.

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Mental Lexicon

Back 10

What speakers know about the words of their native language

-Which pieces go together and which don't

-How to segment utterances

-Syntactic category and "role" of each word

-Form (speech or signed)

-Meaning (Function)

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Morpheme

Back 11

Smallest linguistic unit which has a grammatical function

Like the prefix Un- or the past tense suffix -ed

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Free Morpheme

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A morpheme which can stand on its own. A word composed of only one morpheme is a free morpheme.

Free Morphemes also carry a syntactic category.

Joy (Noun), Lavender (Adj), Sprinkle (Verb)

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Bound Morpheme

Back 13

A morpheme which cannot stand alone. This includes Affixes and Bound Roots

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Affix

Back 14

Type of bound morpheme which attaches to a root. These include Prefix, Suffix, and Infix.

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Bound Root

Back 15

A root which cannot exist as a free morpheme

Ex: Permit, Commit, Remit, Submit. All have root mit which lends some meaning, but it cannot stand alone.

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Allomorph

Back 16

Variation of a single morpheme.

A & An: Both are the same specifier, but they have different manifestations.

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Base

Back 17

A structure to which an affix is attached.

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Stem

Back 18

A base to which an inflectional (like tense) affix is attached.

Sometimes this affix changes the form of the word, this is a stem changer.

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Syntax

Back 19

Part of the grammar which represents a speakers knowledge of sentences and their structures.

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Autonomy of Syntax

Back 20

Syntax exists and is studied independently of meaning.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

-Sentence is meaningless, but it is grammatical.

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Transformational grammar

Back 21

Take a small number of items available to all languages and combine them according to rules.

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Generative/transformational linguitics

Back 22

leading approach to syntax.

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Syntactic Categories

Back 23

Parts of Speech. Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Determiner, Conjunction, Auxiliary.

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Lexical Categories

Back 24

Subgroup of syntactic categories consisting of Noun, Verb, Adj, Adv, Preposition

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Noun

Back 25

Morphological Test: Can be made singular or plural

Syntactic Test: Can follow a determiner

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Verb

Back 26

Morphological Test: Can be inflected, meaning it can carry tense

Syntactic Test: Can be made into present or past perfect tense.

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Lexicon

Back 27

Mental dictionary or repository of all info that every single morpheme contains.

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Computational System:

Back 28

Operations to put those parts together.

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Adjective

Back 29

Morphological Test: can be made comparative or superlative

Syntactic Test: Can go between a determiner and a noun.

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Adverb

Back 30

Morphological Test: kind of tricky, but it root is an adjective and -ily is added to the end, it is an adverb.

Syntactic Test: Can move with relative freedom within a sentence.

He ran quickly down the hill.

He ran down the hill quickly.

Quickly, he ran down the hill.

He quickly ran down the hill.

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Constituent

Back 31

A group of words which forms a syntactic unit. Behaves and moves within a sentence as a unit.

Can be replaced with a single word.

Can be coordinated with another constituent of the exact same kind.

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Constituency Phrase

Back 32

A phrase which forms a constituent

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X' Syntax

Back 33

Every phase must have 3 tiered structure.

In reverse order

XP

Specifier X'

X (Head) Complement

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Head

Back 34

Determines type of sentence

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Complement

Back 35

Joins with the the head to make X'

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Specifier or degree

Back 36

Specifier Words" "the", "A", "An"

Degree Words: "Almost", "Barely", "Slightly"

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Complement of P

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NP

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Complement of N

Back 38

often but not always PP

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Merge

Back 39

Putting two constituents together to form a new constituent.

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Move

Back 40

Moving a constituent to a different part a syntactic tree. Commonly done with yes/no questions and with Wh- questions.

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Matrix subject or Matrix Verb

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Highest ranking Verb or Subject.

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Recursion

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A set of rules with the same starting and ending point

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Deep Structure

Back 43

Where all the parts of a sentence are logically understood.

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Surface Structure

Back 44

The way we hear a sentence.

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Universal Grammar (UG)

Back 45

Humans born with innate blueprint for learning language. This blueprint aids children in learning their native language.

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Parameters

Back 46

Derivative of UG. Option for how language sets rules.

EX: word order in English.

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Semantics

Back 47

Meaning of Morphemes, words, and sentences

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Lexical Semantics

Back 48

Concerning the meaning of morphemes and words.

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Compositional Semantics

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Concerning how meanings of words and phrases come together to a larger meaning.

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Synonym

Back 50

Subset of lexical semantics

Words with different sound but same meaning.

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Antonyms

Back 51

Subset of lexical semantics

Words with opposite meaning.

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Homonyms

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Subset of lexical semantics

Words that sound the same but have different meanings.

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Polysemy

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Subset of lexical semantics

2 different words which have different but related meanings.

EX: Care vs Caring.

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Truth Conditional Semantics

Back 54

Another name for compositional semantics

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Truth Conditions

Back 55

All circumstances which exist while determining the truth value of a sentence.

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Truth Value

Back 56

Is the sentence true or false?

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Tautology

Back 57

Sentence which is always true.

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Contradiction

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Sentence which always has a truth value of false.

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Entailment

Back 59

A relationship between two sentences in which every circumstance for which the truth value of sentence one is true, the truth value of sentence two must also be true. Entailment is unidirectional.

Negating both sentences will reverse the entailment.

Marla sings beautifully

Entails

Marla Sings

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Synonymous sentences

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If 2 sentences are synonymous, they entail each other.

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Antonymous sentences

Back 61

2 sentences which can never entail each other are antonyms

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Ambiguity in semantics

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A sentence which can be assigned a truth value of true under different truth conditions.

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Lexical Ambiguity

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When a word has more than one meaning.

Ex: The pig was in the pen.

Could mean farm animal in its pen. Could mean cop in penitentiary.

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Structural Ambiguity

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When a sentence can be built with more than one syntactic tree.

Ex: I forgot how good beer tastes.

Did this person forget what high quality beer tastes like, or did they forget how much they enjoy the taste of beer?

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Arguments

Back 65

structures which take on the thematic role provided by verbs and prepositions.

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Thematic Role

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Provides information about the meaning of the argument in relation to the Preposition or Verb.

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Idiom

Back 67

Phrases with different meaning than its compositional meaning.

"The cats out of the bag"

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Pragmatics

Back 68

How does context effect meaning. 2 subsets.

Linguistic context

Situational context

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Linguistic Context

Back 69

discourse which proceeds the phrase or sentence to be interpreted. Usually result of compositional semantics and combined rules of syntax and semantics.

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Situational Context

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Derived from environment and info beyond syntax and semantics.

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Cooperative Principle

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Assumed to underlie rules of pragmatics

Consists of 4 maxims

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4 Maxims

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Quantity: say no more nor less than the discourse requires

Relevance: Be relevant

Manner: Be Brief and orderly, avoid ambiguity and obscurity

Quality: Don't lie or make unsupported claims

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Presupposition

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An implicit assumption about the world which is required to make an utterance meaningful and relevant.

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Implicature

Back 74

An inference made about the situation based on an utterance and the goals of the speaker.