chapter 6: language Flashcards
language
a set of sounds, a combination of sounds, and symbols that are used for communication
mutual intelligibility
the ability of two people to understand each other when speaking
standard language
the variant of a language that a country’s political and intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm for use in schools, government, the media, and other aspects of public life
ex. france & king’s english
dialect
local or regional characteristics of a language.
accent = pronunciation
dialect = + distinctive grammar & vocab
dialect chains
a set of contiguous dialects in which the dialects nearest to each other at any place in the chain are most closely related
isogloss
a geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs
language families
group of languages with a shared but fairly distant origin
subfamilies
divisions within a language family where the commonalities are more definite and the origin is more recent
sound shift
slight change in a word across languages within a subfamily or through a language family from the present backward toward its origin
proto-indo- european
linguistic hypothesis proposing the existence of an ancestral indo-european language that is the hearth of the ancient Latin, greek, and sanskrit languages which hearth would link modern languages from Scandinavia to north Africa and from north America through parts of Asia to australia
backward reconstruction
the tracking of sound shifts and hardening of consonants “backward” toward the original language
extinct language
language without any native speakers
deep reconstruction
technique using the vocabulary of an extinct language to recreate the language that proceeded the extinct language
nostratic
language believed to be the ancestral language not only of the proto-indo-europea, but also of the kartvelian languages of the southern caucasus region, the uralic-altaic languages (Hungarian, finish, turkish, Mongolian), the dravadian languages of India, and the afro-asiatic language family
language divergence
a process suggested by german linguist august scheicher whereby new languages are formed when a language breaks into dialects due to lack of spacial interaction among speakers of the language and continued isolation eventually causes the division of the language into discrete new languages
language convergence
the collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of people with different languages
conquest theory
one major theory of how proto-indo-european diffused into Europe which holds that the early speakers of proto-indo-european spread westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of indo-european tongues
dispersal hypothesis
hypothesis which holds that the indo-european languages that arose from proto-indo-european were first carried eastward into southwest Asia, next around the caspian sea, and then across the russian ukranian plainsand on into the balkans
romance languages
french, spanish, italian, romanian, and portugese
languages that lie in the areas that were once controlled by the roman empire but were not subsequently overwhelmed
germanic languages
english, german, danish, norwegian, and swedish
languages that reflect the expansion of peoples out of northern Europe to the west and south
slavic languages
russian, polish, czech, slovak, ukranian, slovenian, serbo-croatian, and bulgarian
languages that developed as slavic people migrated from a base in present day ukraine close to 200 years ago
lingua franca
a term deriving from “frankish language” and applying to a tongue spoken in ancient Mediterranean ports that consisted of a mixture of Italian, french, greek, Spanish, and even some Arabic. today it refers to a “common language,” a language used among speakers of different languages for the purpose of trade and commerce
