Language

Front 1

Semiosis

Back 1

Producing and reading symbols

Front 2

Information vs. Meaning

Back 2

Information - bits of knowledge that can be sorted and differentiated
Meaning - Connecting something new to something we already know

Front 3

Personal Symbols

Back 3

meanings differ from person to person

Front 4

Cultural Symbols

Back 4

meaning of the symbol is shared within a culture - like the American flag

Front 5

Semantics

Back 5

The connection between signs and their meanings

Front 6

Iconic Signs

Back 6

Signs that resemble the things they designate - like smiley faces :) or Chinese character for "man" "人"

Front 7

Indexical Signs

Back 7

A part represents the whole - like "the crown" represents the royal family, or like fingerprints represent someone's identity

Front 8

Arbitrary signs

Back 8

Signs that have no natural relation to what they stand for, but are made up by groups and accepted by cultural convention - like most written words, sign language signs, written numbers or times (like the appearance of the symbol "2' doesn't have anything to do with the value)

Front 9

Games vs. Rituals

Back 9

Games produce winners and losers (differences between ppl)
Rituals perform shared meaning and memory
-baseball does both

Front 10

Two aspects of Pronunciation

Back 10

Phonetics
Phonology

Front 11

Phonology

Back 11

Study of the sounds used in a particular language - an inventory of sounds and their features, how the sounds are organized, and rules that specify how sounds interact with each other

Front 12

Phoneme

Back 12

The smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of language

Front 13

Graphetics

Back 13

Study of the properties of human mark-making - range of marks it is possible to make on a particular surface with particular materials - evolutionary perspective

Front 14

Graphology

Back 14

Study of the relations between sounds and symbols of a particular language

Front 15

Morphology

Back 15

Study of structurally meaningful word parts (morphemes)

Front 16

Morpheme

Back 16

Smallest meaningful word part-
Re-spond-er-s
Fore-ground-ing
Mean-ing-ful-ly

Front 17

Syntax

Back 17

Relations between cause, agency, time, quality, and spatial relationship specified by the order of words
How strings are constructed - words into larger sequences

Front 18

Pidgin

Back 18

languages that form when different societies come into contact and must devise a system of communication

Front 19

Creole

Back 19

After many generations of being spoken, pidgins may develop into this, which is more structured with tighter grammatical rules and native speakers

Front 20

Paralanguage

Back 20

Gesture
Intonation
Stress

Front 21

Pragmatics

Back 21

Doing things with language:
-manipulating others
-convincing
-creating reality
-hiding (lying)

Front 22

Conversational Analysis

Back 22

turn taking
topic control
code switching - kids talk about drinking and a teacher comes in, they change the word "booze" to "juice"

Front 23

Structure of language
(3 Steps)

Back 23

1. Define basic units (building blocks)
a b c d e f...
2. Define rules for combining units
b+e+d but not d+b+e
3. Link resulting sign unit to a concept from the world

Front 24

Design Features

Back 24

An evolutionary approach to human language
What particular capacities does language give us as communicators
Some are shared with other species, some are uniquely human

Front 25

Vocal-Auditory Channel

Back 25

for something to be language it has to be vocal - when language was created, it was to communicate with ppl directly around you, so vocal-auditory worked best

Front 26

Broadcast Transmission and Directional Reception

Back 26

when we say something it is broadcast to everyone around within earshot

Front 27

Rapid-Fading

Back 27

sound dies out after we say it -
advantages: no physical space limit to messages, things that we say don't just bounce around the room endlessly
disadvantage: memory is required to preserve information

Front 28

Interchangeability

Back 28

Double competence: production and reception
-hearer can become speaker
-child can become parent, etc.
Humans learn by taking the role of the other
Basis of traditional socialization

Front 29

Total Feedback

Back 29

We can hear ourselves speak
-we can monitor what we say
-basis of self-consciousness

Front 30

Specialization

Back 30

speech is produced principally for communication, not for any other purpose, like echolocation

Front 31

Arbitrariness

Back 31

sounds and their meanings are connected arbitrarily - language is not tied to reality (we can have words for things that do not exist, or lie)
-in tension with semantics because semantics is a meaningful connection between word and object, but arbitrariness means that there is nothing really connecting the two

Front 32

Semanticity

Back 32

the connection between a sound and the object it represents - for an utterance to become meaningful it cannot SEEM arbitrary to the speaker or listener

Front 33

Discreteness

Back 33

Language is a combinatorial system - it can be broken down to building blocks or discrete units that combine to form continuous-sounding words and phrases

Front 34

Displacement

Back 34

Things can be expressed in different times/places than they happened - allows for "pickling" of experiences

Front 35

Productivity

Back 35

We only have to learn a limited number of rules to be able to say an unlimited number of phrases

Front 36

Traditional Transmission

Back 36

Language is socially reproduced, not biologically

Front 37

Duality of Patterning

Back 37

really: multiplicity of patterning
-language is a hierarchically layered system of formal patterns
-systems within systems within systems

Front 38

Idiolect

Back 38

distinct personal way of speaking

Front 39

Dialect

Back 39

Regional or local way of speaking - also reflects social class

Front 40

Speech Register

Back 40

Way of speaking based on social context - you talk different ways around different people

Front 41

Phonaesthemes

Back 41

Sounds mimic meaning
Fudge, Trudge, Sludge, Grudge- thick, viscous sound